SALVEtoday Archives
23-Jul-01
'ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT' RE-EXAMINED DURING CULTURAL & HISTORIC PRESERVATION CONFERENCE
By Public Affairs Staff
NEWPORT, R.I. - Several of the country's leading scholars and experts in the fields of architecture and art history will converge at Salve Regina University in September for a three-day conference examining the Arts & Crafts Movement.
Registration is now being accepted for Salve's 5th Annual Conference on Cultural and Historic Preservation, hosted by Richard Guy Wilson, which runs Sept. 27-29. In addition to expert lecturers, the conference features tours and of examples of this 19th century movement in historic Newport.
Under the direction of Wilson, Commonwealth professor and chair of the department of Architectural History at the University of Virginia, the three-day session will present new perspectives on the 19th century Arts & Crafts Movement, its origins in England and local manifestations of the movement in Newport.
Tom Michie, curator of decorative arts, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, will present "The Rise and Legacy of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Providence" from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27.
At the end of the 19th century, Providence, Rhode Island was one of the most heavily industrialized cities in the nation. Fortunes made from locally manufactured textiles, machine tools, jewelry, and silver supported the arts, embodied by the Rhode Island School of Design (1877) and the Providence Art Club (1880). This paper will trace the background of these organizations, with an emphasis on the Art Workers Guild, a short-lived collaboration of painters and furniture-makers. Two of their most prominent commissions, the Fleur-de-Lys Studio Building and the Providence Art Club, will be examined in detail, and in the context of Colonial Revival architecture and furniture. The impact of the landmark 1901 Arts and Crafts exhibition will also be examined, as well as the legacy of local artists on the Arts and Crafts movement nationally.
Cleota Reed, scholar affiliate, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University, will present "Irene Sargent and the Craftsman Magazine" from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27.
Irene Sargent, writer, critic, teacher, and possibly the instigator of Gustav Stickley's Craftsman magazine, is unique among the major figure of the Arts and Crafts movement in America in being solely a writer/critic rather than a maker or designer. Her vast knowledge of the visual arts, her erudition, and her extraordinary capacity for productive work made her invaluable to Stickley at a crucial point in the development of his budding Craftsman Empire. This paper examines Sargent's life and work and her important role not only in Stickley's enterprises but also in the dissemination nationwide of the broader principles and history of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Sally Webster, professor of American art, City University of New York, Graduate Center and Lehman College, will present "The American Marriage of Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts: The Graphic Work of Will Bradley" from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27.
Will Bradley (1868-1962), based first in Chicago and later Massachusetts, exploited the new photo-mechanical printing process producing posters and book illustrations during the 1890s that introduced to an American public European innovations in color, typography and composition. His graphic work from this period is characterized by flat clear images of unmodulated color enclosed within the serpentine line of art nouveau and framed by the geometry of an arts and crafts border. This paper will examine his posters and book illustrations and demonstrate how his synthesis of art nouveau and arts and crafts set a new standard for book design and commercial art in this country.
Will Morgan, distinguished teaching professor, emeritus, University of Louisville, will present "The Arts & Crafts in New England Churches: The Anglican Connection" from 9 to 10 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 28.The link between the church and the Arts & Crafts movement was symbiotic from the beginning, but the link was especially strong in late 19th-century New England (Richardson's Trinity Church, with its decorative program including artists such as Burne-Jones, is a key example of the gesamtkunstwerk in America). English ecclesiastical architect George Frederick Bodley gave Morris & Co. its first commission, and Bodley's emmisary in America, Henry Vaughan continued the patronage of decorative painters, wood carvers, and stained glass artists in churches, especially in the Northeast. Vaughan-inspired Gothic Revivalists, particularly Ralph Adams Cram, contributed to a flowering of the Arts & Crafts in ecclesiastical design.
Paul Miller, curator, Preservation Society of Newport County, will present "Peasant Cottages for Newport?" on Friday, Sept. 28 from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m.
Shunning their classicist peers - the well-known architects and decorators of Newport's Gilded Age "cottages" with their requisite Louis Seize salons - the reformers of the Arts and Crafts movement boasted that they had found the design vocabulary of Democracy. The movement involved craftsmanship in pottery, glass, metal, wood and textiles; in principle it did not require any historical design motif, but rather suggested a specific organic way of looking at the commonplace as art and at the plain everyday honest world through art.
Cheryl Robertson, independent scholar, curator and museum educator, will present "At Home with the Arts & Crafts Movement" from 1 to 2:20 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 28.
The Arts and Crafts movement was decidedly domestic: "hearth and home" were revered and oft invoked by both committed movement reformers and savvy marketers of mass-produced household furnishings. This talk will explore both elite and popular expressions of "simple" living in Arts and Crafts interiors. How complex was this homey simplicity? How did Arts and Crafts adherents mediate the ambiguities and contradictions of functionality, fashion, and consumption?
Catherine Zipf, Ph.D., independent historian, will present "Professional Pursuits: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement" from 1 to 2 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 28.
Women participated in the Arts and Crafts movement in many nontraditional ways; as laborers who designed the products, as leaders who spread the faith and as professional women interested in more than a domestic life. Such women both shaped and were shaped by the movement, on the one hand through non-domestic opportunities available via artistic communities and on the other hand through the use of these opportunities to help the movement reach its fullest potential. This examination of prominent women from three major geographic centers, Boston, Syracuse and New York, will outline and discuss the issues surrounding women's contributions to the Arts and Crafts movement.
John Burrows, design historian and owner of J.R. Burrows & Company, Historical-Design Merchants of Rockland, Massachusetts, will present "Morris & Company at the Foreign Fair: Marketing Arts & Crafts Design in 1880s Boston" from 9 to 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 29.
During the winter of 1883-84, Morris & Company undertook their most ambitious marketing effort in America, with a six booth pavilion at the Foreign Fair in Boston and the publication of an exhibit catalog. Underpinned by sales efforts of local commercial representatives, this exhibit increased awareness of New Englanders in the products and design philosophy of William Morris and impacted architects such as H.H. Richardson, Peabody & Stearns, Stanford White, Ogden Codman and Arthur Little.
The conference is open to all interested parties including scholars and professionals in the fields of historic and cultural preservation, architecture, interior design and historic landscape design. Students are also encouraged to attend.
Registration fees are $300 prior to Aug. 16, $350 after Aug. 16, and $110 for single-day participation. Price for student registration is $75. Registration fee includes dinner on Sept. 23, two receptions and box lunches.