Online Lecture | John Whitehead, Japanese Lacquer on French Furniture
From the FHS announcement:
John Whitehead, The Use of Japanese Lacquer on French 18th-Century Furniture
Furniture History Society Online Lecture, Sunday, 17 January 2021, 19.00 (GMT)
Japanese lacquer has been recognised in Europe as the best of all Asian lacquers since the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century it was much used to decorate furniture in France and elsewhere. Paris marchands-merciers and ébénistes clearly had no respect for the integrity of pieces, as we would have now, and created some delightful furniture with chopped-up pieces of lacquer. This subject was first discussed by the FHS at a memorable symposium in 1988 and continues to amuse us today.
John Whitehead is a dealer in French eighteenth-century decorative arts, with an emphasis on Sèvres porcelain. He is the author of The French Interior in the Eighteenth Century (1992) and two books on eighteenth century Sèvres porcelain (2010). With Oliver Impey, he has written on Japanese lacquer and French furniture, including the entry in the exhibition catalogue, William Beckford, 1760–1844: An Eye for the Magnificent (2001).
This event is free for FHS members and £5 for non-members; please contact events@furniturehistorysociety.org for tickets.
Research Lunch | Rebecca Tropp on the Picturesque and Country Houses
This talk was slated for last March; it’s been rescheduled as an online event, sponsored by the Mellon Centre:
Rebecca Tropp, Accommodating the Picturesque: The Country Houses of James Wyatt, John Nash, and Sir John Soane, 1793–1815
(Zoom) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 29 January 2021
James Wyatt, Ashridge House, commissioned by the 7th Earl of Bridgewater.
Whilst much has been written about the development of Picturesque theory at the end of the eighteenth century, regarding both the landscape itself and prescriptions for the sitting of buildings within it, these discussions have generally been limited to two-dimensional snapshots, such as those represented in Humphry Repton’s Red Books. This paper, based upon ongoing research for a doctoral dissertation, seeks to push beyond the visual to investigate some of the physical implications and repercussions of the Picturesque ideal – the intersection between the visual two-dimensional picture-plane and the practical three-dimensional architectural response – on the design and construction of country houses at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Focusing on the work of James Wyatt (1746–1813), John Nash (1752–1835), and Sir John Soane (1753–1837), and limiting investigation to those country houses designed during the pivotal period from 1793 to 1815, the paper investigates two specific implications related to the lowering of the principal floor from piano nobile to ground level, as part of a general repositioning of the house within the landscape. First is the use of level changes within the ground floor—the inclusion of a few steps up or down in entrance halls or between rooms, as distinct from staircases between floors—considering some possible reasons for their incorporation and the purposes they served. Second, and sometimes connected to these level changes, is an increase in permeability between interior and exterior, through the use of full-length windows, loggias and attached conservatories—social/botanical spaces that were first incorporated into the design of the house during this period. Taken together, these developments furthered the evolving relationship between house and landscape and, as a result, the experience of moving through and between those spaces.
Rebecca Tropp is currently finishing her PhD in History of Art at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, working under the supervision of Dr Frank Salmon. She completed her MPhil in History of Art and Architecture at Cambridge in 2015, investigating recurring spatial arrangements and patterns of movement in the country houses of John Nash. Prior to commencing postgraduate studies in the UK, she received her bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in New York, where she majored in the History and Theory of Architecture.
Xavier Salomon on Clodion’s Dance of Time
The Dance of Time, Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock, movement by Jean-Baptiste Lepaute, sculpture by Claude Michel Clodion, 1788, terracotta, gilt brass, and glass, H.: 41 inches (New York: The Frick Collection, bequest of Winthrop Kellogg Edey) Photo: Michael Bodycomb.
A very Happy New Year to all of you! I should have posted news of this brief talk earlier, but it will be available on YouTube whenever you might have the time and inclination to watch. I also point out the series more generally for those of you always looking for teaching resources. Past installments (typically 20 minutes) address paintings by Gainsborough, Stubbs, Romney, Tiepolo, Boucher, and Chardin, along with extraordinary decorative arts objects (and plenty of works beyond the eighteenth century). –CH
Xavier Salomon on Clodion’s Dance of Time
YouTube, 1 January 2021, 5pm (EST)
This week’s episode of Cocktails with a Curator toasts the new year with Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon as he examines a masterpiece of both sculpture and clockmaking: The Dance of Time, by Clodion (Claude Michel) and Jean-Baptiste Lepaute. In this 18th-century timepiece, three terracotta nymphs or Hours dance in a circle around an exquisite mechanism enclosed in a glass globe. The Frick has one of the country’s most important collections of clocks, many of which came to the museum through a gift from Winthrop Kellogg Edey. Welcome 2021 by raising a Metropolitan cocktail—Happy New Year!
Online Conference | Discovering Dalmatia VI
From the Exposition project website:
Discovering Dalmatia VI — Watching, Waiting: Empty Spaces and the Representation of Isolation
Online, 3–5 December 2020
This year, the annual Discovering Dalmatia conference will take place virtually, over the course of three days. Watching, Waiting: Empty Spaces and the Representation of Isolation is inspired by the Institute of Art History’s project Exposition [Ekspozicija]: Themes and Aspects of Croatian Photography from the 19th Century until Today, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. It represents the sixth annual Discovering Dalmatia conference, a programme offering a week of events in scholarship and research.
Inspired by the current situation, this interdisciplinary conference will be dedicated to the history and theory of representing empty space through the media of photography, film, and other artistic practices. The conference is likewise open to the themes of empty spaces, isolation, and loneliness from the perspective of other scholarly disciplines.
In addition to the conference, and as part of this year’s Discovering Dalmatia, an exhibition curated by Joško Belamarić will be launched at the Split City Museum, entitled Split and Diocletian’s Palace in the Work of Danish Painter Johan Peter Kornbeck.
This year’s programme will conclude with an online presentation of the book Discovering Dalmatia: Dalmatia in Travelogues, Images, and Photographs, edited by Katrina O’Loughlin, Ana Šverko and Elke Katharina Wittich (Zagreb 2019), which brings together articles that emerged from earlier Discovering Dalmatia conferences.
Please join us via Zoom:
Thursday, 3 December 2020
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81939301537?pwd=dENUcEdKdXpmaG54Tk9Sd205amprZz09
Friday, 4 December 2020
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81752813627?pwd=RVJOd2o5S0tnck5SdW1VckJ6dUliZz09
Saturday, 5 December 2020
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83531036592?pwd=Q20ydUI5VDFSd2ZNM1E2N1Y1cWxGdz09
T H U R S D A Y , 3 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0
9.00 Introduction by Sandra Križić Roban and Ana Šverko
9.15 Session 1
Moderated by Sandra Križić Roban
• Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker, Separation Anxiety: Filming the Nicosia Buffer Zone, with projection of the film, Father-land
• Isabelle Catucci, A Land of Collective Solitude
• Marina Milito and Maria Angélica da Silva, Visualizing Emptiness over Emptiness: Leaving Home in Pandemic Times (Maceió, Brazil)
• Cristina Moraru, Empty Spaces, Illuminated Minds: Towards a Time Withdrawn from the Capital
• Luca Nostri, Existential Topography: Photographs of Lugo During the Lockdown / 6–18 April 2020
11.45 Break
12.15 Session 2
Moderated by Lana Lovrenčić
• Anna Schober de Graaf, Occupying Empty Spaces: Political Protest and Public Solidarity in Times of Social Distancing
• Bec Rengel, The Empty Plinth and the Politics of Emptiness
F R I D A Y , 4 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0
9.30 Session 3
Moderated by Lana Lovrenčić and Ana Šverko
• Elke Katharina Wittich, Silent Ruins
• Emily Burns, Emptying Paris: Edward Hopper in Paris, 1910 / 2020
• Marija Barović, Ston’s Voids
• Jessie Martin, Deconstructing Understandings of Emptiness: An Examination of Representations of Transitory Space and ‘Non-place’ in Photography
• Ruth Baumeister, The Power of Emptiness
• Dominik Lengyel and Catherine Toulouse, The Representation of Empty Spaces in Architecture
11.45 Break
12.35 Session 4
Moderated by Mirko Sardelić
• Asija Ismailovski, Empty Space as Artistic Strategy
• Marta Chiara Olimpia Nicosia, Species of Spaces, Species of Emptiness: Idleness and Boredom
• Anči Leburić and Laura John, Visualization as a Qualitative Procedure in the Representation of the Meanings of What We Are Researching in Space
S A T U R D A Y , 5 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0
9.00 Session 5
Moderated by Mirko Sardelić
• Martin Kuhar and Stella Fatović-Ferenčić, Empty Spaces in Photographs of Public Health Remnants in Dalmatia
• Klaudija Sabo, Representations of Quarantine and Space in Visual Culture
9.45 Break
10.00 Session 6
Moderated by Liz Wells
• Catlin Langford, Staging Isolation: Images of Seclusion and Separation
• Tihana Rubić, Ethnographies of Waiting, Ethnographies of Emptiness: Time and Space through Photography
• Meg Wellington-Barratt, Hierarchy of History: Curation of Photography during the Covid-19 Lockdown Period
New Digital Publication | Art & the Country House
From the Mellon Centre:
Martin Postle, ed., Art & the Country House, launched November 2020.
Explore the collections of Castle Howard, Doddington Hall, Mells Manor, Mount Stuart, Petworth House, Raynham Hall, Trewithen and West Wycombe through the Paul Mellon Centre’s new online publication Art & the Country House.
Involving research by over forty authors, Art & the Country House brings together detailed catalogues, document transcriptions, commissioned essays, films and an abundance of specially commissioned photography. Through its search facility, objects, artists, art works and bibliographies can be located and compared in new, productive, and more rapid ways.
Each of the houses has been carefully selected so as to ensure a broad range of research topics and to provide an appropriately varied set of examples, in terms of geographical location, scale, patterns of ownership, chronologies, collections and displays.
Essay topics include the evolution of customised picture galleries; the conscious preservation of the past; women’s collecting and display strategies; country houses as homes and tourist destinations; and the economic and political structures that underpinned the extravagant acquisition policies of the owners of so-called ‘power houses’.
Art & the Country House, as with all other Paul Mellon Centre digital publications, is open access.
Conference | Working Wood in the 18th Century
From Colonial Williamsburg:
Back to Work: Functional Furniture for Home and Shop
23rd Annual Working Wood in the 18th Century Conference
(Online), Williamsburg, Virginia, 14–17 January 2021
The 23rd annual Working Wood in the 18th Century conference is going virtual. Join our expert woodworking tradespeople as well as a distinguished lineup of guests for live-streamed, on-demand, and Q&A sessions.
Work, in the 18th century, took many forms from gentry avocations to the daily vocations and labors of most people regardless of race, gender, or age. This year’s conference theme Back to Work: Functional Furniture for Home and Shop invites you to join us virtually as we explore furnishings, fixtures, and tools designed for work at home and in the shop.
Christopher Schwarz, renowned woodworker, author, and founder of Lost Art Press, joins us to explore period work holding techniques drawn from years of research into historical workbenches. He will also demonstrate techniques used for building the staked seating furniture that is nearly ubiquitous in images of early work environments. From out of the shop and into the home, Bob Van Dyke (woodworker, teacher, and founder of the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking) will guide attendees through the construction and decoration of a Federal era lady’s work table for needlecrafts. Colonial Williamsburg’s master cabinetmaker, Bill Pavlak, demonstrates a mahogany writing table with a ratcheting top and a drawer that includes its own ratcheting writing surface—the perfect piece for writing, reading, and drawing. Apprentice cabinetmakers John Peeler and Jeremy Tritchler will straddle the line of fine furniture and workaday utility with an intricate mahogany apothecary’s chest from the London shop of Philip Bell.
Meanwhile, back in the shop Brian Weldy, journeyman-supervisor joiner, demonstrates the construction and use of a treadle lathe based on numerous period illustrations and surviving examples. Apprentice joiners Amanda Doggett, Scott Krogh, and Peter Hudson explore a handful of shop-made woodworking tools and fixtures. As to the people working within these long-ago shops, the significant presence and role of skilled black craftspeople (enslaved and free) has often been left out of the literature. Carpenters Ayinde Martin and Harold Caldwell along with coachman Adam Canaday will lead a panel discussion on black tradespeople from the past, how we can learn about them, and how we can interpret their stories today.
Architectural historian Jeffrey Klee will tie these disparate subjects together in an opening keynote that explores how we can understand work in the 18th century from the design, use, and evolution of buildings from within the Historic Area and beyond. In this same spirit, master carpenter Garland Wood and orientation supervisor Janice Canaday will look at the Randolph House Kitchen from the perspective of the enslaved carpenters who would have participated in its construction and the enslaved people who worked and lived within its walls.
Should you have questions regarding our Educational Conferences, Forums & Symposiums, please give us a call at 1.800.603.0948, or send us an email at educationalconferences@cwf.org. Registration for the 2021 Working Wood conference is now open.
Online Conference | Décoration intérieure et plaisir des sens, 1700–1850
From the conference programme:
Décoration intérieure et plaisir des sens, 1700–1850
Online Colloquium, 3-4 December 2020
Organisé par l’Université de Genève (Unité d’histoire de l’art) et l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Equipe de recherche HiCSA et Ecole doctorale d’histoire de l’art)
Lien pour l’inscription – jeudi 3 décembre :
https://unige.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6uqfcGYcTPKviyDc7H_sQA
Lien pour l’inscription – vendredi 4 décembre :
https://unige.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oe2wR8RUSAe1DNOS34S9EQ
Colloque organisé par Noémi Duperron (Université de Genève), Barbara Jouves-Hann (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Maxime Georges Métraux (Université Paris-Sorbonne/Galerie Hubert Duchemin), Bérangère Poulain (Université de Genève) et Marc-André Paulin (Université de Lille/Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France).
Informations et contact : decoration.et.plaisir@gmail.com
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J E U D I , 3 D E C E M B R E 2 0 2 0
14.00 Introduction, Bérangère Poulain (Université de Genève) et Barbara Jouves-Hann (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
14.30 Session 1A: Mobilier
Modérée par Jean-Jacques Gautier (Mobilier national)
• Thibaut Wolvesperges (Université Paris-Sorbonne), Dessin d’ornemaniste et création du meuble
• Daniel Alcouffe (Musée du Louvre), La naissance du bureau et de la commode au XVIIe siècle
• Élisabeth Caude (Château de Versailles) et Frédéric Leblanc (C2RMF), Le cabinet particulier du roi Louis XIV à Versailles secrets autour des transformations d’un bureau
16.00 Pause
16.30 Session 1B: Mobilier
Modérée par Jean-Jacques Gautier (Mobilier national)
• Muriel Barbier (Mobilier national), « Une tente sous laquelle on dort » : l’alcôve et le lit d’alcôve dans la chambre au XVIIIe
• Ulrich Leben (Indépendant), Formes, matérialité et usages du mobilier
17.30 Conclusion, Marc-André Paulin (Université de Lille/C2RMF)
V E N D R E D I , 4 D E C E M B R E 2 0 2 0
9.00 Introduction, Noémi Duperron (Université de Genève) et Maxime Georges Métraux (Université Paris-Sorbonne/Galerie Hubert Duchemin)
9.30 Session 2A: Théorie
Modérée par Carl Magnusson (Université de Lausanne)
• Desmond-Bryan Kraege (Université de Lausanne), Fraîcheur, odeurs et procédés narratifs : Le génie de l’architecture de Le Camus de Mézières à la lumière de la théorie des jardins
• Aurélien Davrius (École nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-Malaquais), Nouvelles typologies d’habitation au XVIIIe siècle
10.30 Pause
11.00 Session 2B: Théorie
Modérée par Carl Magnusson (Université de Lausanne)
• Joséphine Grimm (École nationale des Chartes), Construire le boudoir idéal : état de l’influence réciproque de la littérature sur les traités d’architecture au XVIIIe siècle
• Christina Contandriopoulos (Université du Québec à Montréal), Une spatialité intérieure, Madame de Maisonneuve et le Dôme des Invalides
14.30 Session 3A: Techniques
Modérée par Jan blanc (Université de Genève)
• Johanna Ilmakunnas (Åbo Akademi University), Thermal comfort, spatial order, and objects in country houses, Sweden c.1740–1800
• Olivier Jandot (Université Artois), Le feu caché. Introduction du confort thermique et métamorphoses de l’économie des sens, France, 1700–1850
15.30 Pause
16.30 Session 3B: Techniques
Modérée par Jan blanc (Université de Genève)
• Erika Wicky (Université Lumière Lyon 2), L’odeur des vernis ou la toxicité du confort au XVIIIe siècle
• Carine Desrondiers (Université Rennes 2), Les effets magnifiques ou les agréments de la serrurerie dans la décoration intérieure française de la fin du règne de Louis XIV à la Monarchie de Juillet
17.30 Conclusion générale et pistes de réflexion, Christian Michel (Université de Lausanne)
Today | HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
Online, Saturday, 7 November 2020, 2:00–3:30pm (EST)
The first HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase begins today at 2pm EST. Please join us via zoom to hear our first seven emerging scholars present their research. Each participant will present for 3–5 minutes, and after the presentations, we will host a question and answer session. The seven presenters and their presentation titles are listed below. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Dani Ezor (dezor@smu.edu).
Best regards,
HECAA Board
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Zoom link: https://smu.zoom.us/j/95131749838
Meeting ID: 951 3174 9838
• Aditi Gupta, (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Imperial Collection of J.B Gentil: A Frenchman’s Quest for Knowledge Production on India
• Nele Lüttmann (Trinity College Dublin), German Architects in Britain and Ireland, 1700–1750
• Agnieszka Anna Ficek (CUNY Graduate Center), Picturing the Peruvienne: The Exotic and Erotic in Mme de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Peruvienne
• María del Castillo García Romero (University of Seville), Feminae Devotae: Artistic Portraits on Religious Female Culture in Baja Andalusia during the Eighteenth Century
• Michael Hartman (University of Delaware), Bodies and Vision in the North American Landscape
• Archie Manister-O’Neill (Courtauld Institute of Art), In Search of Rebecca Magg: Tracing the History of Three Hand-Crafted Dolls (ca. 1786) Kept in the Bristol Archive
• Ashley Hannebrink (Harvard University), Shaping the Self: Sculpture and the Interior in Eighteenth-Century France
Online Conference | Hayley2020
From The Fitzwilliam:
Hayley2020: A Fitzwilliam Museum Conference
Online, 12–13 November 2020
George Romney, John Flaxman Modeling the Bust of William Hayley, 1795–96, oil on canvas, 89 × 57 inches (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.538).
Convened to mark the bicentenary of his death, Hayley2020 is the first ever conference dedicated to writer, scholar, and amateur doctor William Hayley (1745–1820). Hugely influential in his time, Hayley is now mostly remembered for persuading William Blake to move to the Sussex coast, commissioning illustrations and prints from him, and driving him to distraction. But there is much more to the man who wrote (in verse) a runaway bestseller advising young women on how to attract and keep a husband, refused the poet laureateship for political reasons, and was the first person to publish an English translation of a long extract from Dante’s Inferno. Join us online on November 12 and 13 for a series of presentations and discussions about Hayley and his world (listed times are GMT). All are welcome.
T H U R S D A Y , 1 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 0
14.45 Welcome
Suzanne Reynolds, Lisa Gee, Naomi Billingsley, and Mark Crosby welcome you to virtual Eartham, but promise not to write you an adulatory sonnet.
15.00 On Romney, His Relationship with Hayley, and Works Arising
Alex Kidson talks about how Romney and Hayley’s relationship changed over the years, discussing works including the Cupid and Psyche cartoons, Flaxman Modelling the Bust of Hayley, and Romney’s illustrations for Hayley’s Essay on Old Maids (series of short videos). Parallel discussion in the chat with Alex present, followed by discussion. Video available for viewing beforehand and afterwards.
15.40 Coffee Break
You’ll have to bring your own hot beverage, but feel free to hang out, catch up with friends, and network like it’s 1795 in Hayley’s Library.
16.05 Hayley in His Contexts
Lisa Gee: Hayley – Essay on Sculpture, Mary Cockerell & the decline & death of Tom.; Alexandra Harris; Susan Matthews: Amina Wright: ‘Artist and Bard in Sweet Alliance: Joseph Wright of Derby and the Hermit of Eartham.’. Chaired by Mark Crosby.
16.45 Tea Break
17.00 Object-Oriented Session
Demo/test of the AMoR (A Museum of Relationships) pilot + discussion, with Lisa Gee and Suzanne Reynolds.
17.40 Plenary Discussions
F R I D A Y , 1 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 0
13.00 Virtual Conference Picnic
Find us in the windswept (virtual) grounds of Eartham where, because it’s mid-November, we’re happy this is online rather than IRL.
15.00 On Hayley, Flaxman, and Blake
David Bindman discusses the memorials on which Flaxman and Hayley collaborated, one that Hayley tried to interfere in, and explains why Hayley’s relationship with Blake was so different to those with Flaxman and Romney.
15.40 Coffee Break
16.05 Hayley and Blake
Mark Crosby, Sarah Haggarty, Jason Whittaker: Hayley in Blake biographies. Chaired by Naomi Billingsley.
16.40 Tea Break
17.05 Future Scholarship
New collaborations, action planning. Chaired by Lisa Gee.
17.50 Concluding Remarks
HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
George Lambert, Classical Landscape, 1745, oil on canvas, 41 × 46 inches
(London: Tate)
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HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
Online, Saturday, 7 November 2020, 2:00–3:30pm (EST)
Please mark your calendars for the first HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase on Saturday, November 7, from 2:00 to 3:30pm EST. We will hear from our first seven emerging scholars present their research in 3– to 5–minute presentations, after which we will open up the floor to questions and comments. The intention of these showcases is to create networking opportunities, and we look forward to your audience participation in support of our emerging scholars.
We received an overwhelming number of applications, ranging geographically from China, India, and Australia, to Brazil, Europe, and across the USA. The topics likewise range in their geographical origin, theoretical approach, materials, techniques, and methods. We will also hold two additional showcases on 6 February 2021 and 17 April 2021.
Registration is not required. A Zoom link will be sent out to all HECAA members the week before November 7. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Dani Ezor (dezor@smu.edu). Thank you!
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