Exhibition | William Kent, 1686-1748: Designing Georgian Britain
We’ll hear more in the coming months about this exhibition, but I note it here just to whet your appetite. Based on recent exhibitions at The Bard, I’m especially looking forward to the programming and publication. -CH.
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William Kent 1686-1748: Designing Georgian Britain
The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York, Fall 2013
V&A, London, Spring 2014
Organized in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A).
Curated by Susan Weber Director and Founder, BGC and Julius Bryant, Keeper of Word and Image Department, V&A
New NEH Website: More Accessible, More Informative, More Lively
When there’s so much pressure on federal budgets, it’s exciting to see the NEH make the case for its importance, not only for scholars but also for the public more generally. Among academics, NEH Fellowships are the best known forms of support, but they’re also the most competitive. Have a look at the new site and see if your research projects might fit other funding opportunities. -CH
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The National Endowment for the Humanities launched a comprehensive new website Monday, April 9, giving the Endowment a more user-friendly, engaging, and transparent platform for people seeking grants and for the public interested in humanities research, scholarship, and public programs. After a complete overhaul of the site, grant guidelines and grant management information is clearer and more accessible. A new EXPLORE section allows users to access information about more than 200 documentaries, radio programs, and apps produced by broadcasters and others with NEH grants. A prominent new rotator will showcase news of NEH and books, seminars, and other projects growing out of Endowment funding. As the Endowment launched the site, the rotator featured:
- A lesson from the EDSITEment educational website for teachers, students, and parents about Sor Juana, a seventeenth century nun, feminist and poet, considered the first great poet of the Americas;
- A story about a Maryland State Humanities lecturer on the Oyster Wars, when Maryland had an “Oyster Navy” in the 1890s to drive out interloping oystermen;
- A compendium of Civil War programs funded by the NEH, including reading and discussion programs being put on in 213 community and other libraries using a new anthology of important Civil War stories and documents.
- A biographical sketch of Philip Lampi, the nation’s greatest expert on the election returns from the American political campaigns of 1789-1825 and recipient of the first Chairman’s Commendation for service to the humanities;
- A story about a new NEH-funded translation of the Topography of Algiers, written by Antonio da Sosa in 1612 after he had been imprisoned for five years by the Barbary Pirates ( at the same time as Miguel da Cervantes, author of Don Quixote.)
The new NEH site showcases the award-winning HUMANITIES Magazine, now in a richly illustrated magazine format.
Each NEH division and program will have its own series of pages to feature projects, news about grants and opportunities to meet program officers in the field. The stories include:
- How a small grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council led to a traveling exhibition on the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till, the creation of the Mississippi Civil Rights Trail, and NEH-funded summer sessions on the Mississippi Delta.
- How Helen Clay Frick’s vision of documenting every work of art in the western world echos in the New York Art Resources Consortium online catalog, Arcade.
- How Digital Humanities scholars who received “Start Up” grants to break new ground in the humanities describe their research in “Lightning Round” on the site.
- How knowledge, gleaned through NEH research grants, is freely available and shared through white papers on the site.
NEH.gov will highlight information about projects funded through collaboration with state humanities councils. Links to all 56 state and territorial humanities councils and their calendars of activities will be offered at a single location.
EDSITEment, the Endowment’s prize winning K-12 educational site funded by a partnership between NEH and the Verizon Foundation, will offer high quality internet resources in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies.
Users can link directly to Chronicling America, the joint project of the NEH and the Library of Congress to digitize historic American newspapers. They can also access information directly on NEH’s funded projects sorted by topics of interest, state by state and at particular universities.
The NEH.gov redesign is part of an administration effort to modernize and streamline web operations, to consolidate websites for ease of maintenance, clarity and cost savings over time, and to make the work of government more accessible to all Americans.
The new neh.gov was built in-house using Drupal, an open source content management system. It is hosted on cloud infrastructure. It replaces an 11 year old interim site that had become outmoded. The new back-end architecture makes it possible to alter and enlarge the website’s capabilities without costly new redesigns.
New Title | ‘Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware c.1740-1940’
From the Antique Collector’ Club:
Yvonne Jones, Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware c.1740-1940 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2012), 336 pages, ISBN: 9781851496860, £45.
As one of the few decorative arts about which little has been written, japanning is today fraught with misunderstandings. And yet, in its heyday, the japanning industry attracted important commissions from prestigious designers such as Robert Adam, and orders from fashionable society across Europe and beyond.
This book is a long overdue history of the industry which centred on three towns in the English midlands: Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Bilston. It is as much about the workers, their skills, and the factories and workshops in which they laboured, as it is about the goods they made. It tells of matters of taste and criticism, and of how an industry which continued to rely so heavily upon hand labour in the machine age reached its natural end in the 1880s with a few factories lingering into the late 1930s. Richly illustrated, it includes photographs of mostly marked, or well-documented, examples of japanned tin and papier mâché against which readers may compare – and perhaps identify – unmarked specimens.
Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware draws predominantly upon contemporary sources: printed, manuscript and typescript documents, and, for the period leading up to the closure of the last factories in the 1930s, the author was able to draw on verbal accounts of eyewitnesses. With a chapter on japanners in London, other European centres, and in the United States, together with a directory of japan artists and decorators, this closely researched and comprehensive book is the reference work for collectors, dealers and enthusiasts alike.
Contents
From Imitation to Innovation; Enter the Dragon!; The Lion of the District; Japanning & Decorating; Not a Bed of Roses!; Clever Accidents?; Decline of the Midlands Japanning Industry; The Birmingham Japanners; The Wolverhampton Japanners; The Bilston Japanners; Japanners in London and Oxford; Products; Other Western Japanning Centres; Appendices.
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With a degree in Fine Art, Yvonne Jones taught art in schools and colleges before joining Wolverhampton Art Galleries and Museums in 1971, serving first as Keeper of Applied Art, and then as Head of Arts & Museums. Researching, documenting and extending the town’s collection of japanned papier mâché and tinware, she became aware of the breadth and importance of this field in the decorative arts. She left her post in 1994 to concentrate on a programme of original research, and is now an international authority on the subject and continues to lecture widely in both Britain and the United States.
At Sotheby’s | de La Tour d’Auvergne Lauraguais Collection
Press release from Sotheby’s:
Collection of Prince and Princess Henry de La Tour d’Auvergne Lauraguais, L12308
Sotheby’s, London, 3 May 2012
Enrico Hugford, one of a pair of Italian scagliola panels
within carved giltwood and ebonised frames, mid 18th century
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Sotheby’s London will offer for sale The Collection of Prince and Princess Henry de La Tour d’Auvergne Lauraguais on 3rd May 2012 [L12308]. The auction comprises property from the family’s London homes. It will include very fine Neo-classical and Empire furniture, the finest collection of 18th-century scagliola to appear at auction, Old Master paintings, silver, objets de vertu, and drawings and books from the library of celebrated designer and architect Emilio Terry from Château de Rochecotte. Estimates in the sale range from £400 to £300,000. In total, the auction is estimated to realise £2-4 million. The history of the de La Tour d’Auvergne Lauraguais family is a long and distinguished one. Related by marriage to the noblest dynasties in France, it is one of only six families (alongside the houses of Savoie, Lorraine, Grimaldi, Rohan and La Tremoille) to be granted the rights and privileges accorded to foreign princes.
Mario Tavella, Deputy Chairman, Sotheby’s Europe commented: “It is an honour for Sotheby’s to be entrusted with this wonderful collection from one of France’s greatest and most glamorous families. Collectors will be delighted with the quality and breadth of items on offer, which together exude a very chic look. Emilio Terry was at the heart of avant-garde circles in 1920s Paris and many of the books in his library reflect his intimate relationship with key figures such as Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali. More than that, his passionate interest in architecture is manifest in the host of important architectural books that he owned, as well as in his own fabulous and often fantastical drawings.”
The sale includes museum quality Neo-classical and Empire furniture by some of the greatest French ébenistes, including Jacob and Joseph. The group is headlined by a magnificent gilt-bronze mounted amaranth and tulip wood secrétaire by Joseph, circa 1770, which, with its very strong neo-classical outline, represents the pinnacle of Le Goût Grec style. Estimated at £150,000-300,000*, an identical secrétaire is held in the Getty Museum in Malibu.
The sale will present the greatest collection of 18th-century scagliola ever to come to the market. Developed in 17th-century Tuscany as an alternative to the costly marble inlays of pietra dura, scagliola is an extraordinarily complex technique, often used to produce decorative effects resembling inlays in marble and semi-precious stones. The technique is a particular passion of Princess Anne de La Tour d’Auvergne Lauraguais, who is an expert in the field. The sale will offer eight rare scagliola panels by virtuoso craftsmen Enrico Hugford and Lamberto Christiano Gori, which depict seascapes and marine scenes inspired by the Tuscan coast. Princess Anne de La Tour d’Auvergne Lauraguais commented: “It was my father, Prince Henry who inspired me to study the art of scagliola, and in turn it was my father’s uncle Emilio Terry who also truly appreciated this form of art and who had influenced him. In my father’s opinion, scagliola had a refinement of colour, texture and sensuality softened as if dimmed by a veil of fog, not like pietre dure which could be bright and almost screaming with colour. Scagliola is a man-made stone, not meant to be used outside, but to live with…. I followed his advice and am indebted to him for giving me a life-long love for the art of scagliola.” (more…)
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