here is my handle, here is my spout

Boy do I love decorative arts within decorative arts. This amazing wallpaper is for sale at Anthropologie. I think it would look great in my fantasy brownstone - in the small room where my gardening supplies are kept.

circa

Check out the wallpaper. I wonder where this was taken... Plus my grandparents are a scream.

Zuber Wallpaper

My trip to NYC is giving me a lot to write about, since we had a week packed with antiques, design, museums, and auctions.

While on our way to the design center in New York, a few of my classmates and I stopped in the Zuber showroom! It is very tiny, but so so cool. Here I'm posing with a trompe l'oeil paper, made to look like lace. I wanted my picture with this particular paper because it is one of the patterns from the early 19th century (I think 1830s?) that they still produce! I think most of what they sell today is comprised of the older designs, which includes tons of the scenic papers they are most famous for. One of my first posts was about a wallpaper made by one of their competitors, Merii. That paper came from an awesome book about French wallpapers that this lace paper is in too.

Claire Coles Wallpaper

My mother, an awesome librarian at the Cleveland Museum of Art, often sends me books, articles from magazines and newspapers, and other tidbits that relate to what I study. She used to work in the library where I pretty much live now, and she is one of the few people who fully understand what I do and why. Anyway, a few days ago she sent me some material from the museum of wallpaper in Alsace, as well as a little clipping about Claire Coles. Coles is an artist and designer who makes a variety of objects including ceramics and wearable art, but the article was about her wallpaper creations. She uses old "forgotten" papers she collects, and stitches them together, sometimes adding leather and other materials. My favorite design from her website is this one with lamp shades, because, of course, I love the decorative art within the decorative art.

Merii Wallpaper

You have to either totally adore or despise this design. Though I have trouble envisioning a room swarthed in its spikey goodness, I love it. This paper was designed in Paris by a company called Merii. I found it in a great book by Odile Nouvel, Wall-papers of France 1800-1850, which pretty much gives away its mystery-date of manufacture. This paper was made in 1827! I asked for guesses here in the library, and got "Victorian" and "the 1930s" in response. I recommend Nouvel's book - it has tons of great color images with detailed information, in French, English, and German.

In my research last semester on early 19th century interiors, I formed a hypothesis as to why tons of historic houses interpreting this period are done so poorly: people can't palate the designs. There are so many crazy patterns from this period that look so modern, I was astonished. Even I got a little queasy when I was pouring through the wallpaper books for examples for my furnishing plan. The French papers tend to be a little more wild than what was produced in America (quelle surprise!). For papers used in America, I recommend visiting Historic New England's wallpaper collection. The history section is well illustrated (and of course well researched!), and the searchable collections catalogue provides samples of papers found in American homes. It's an amazing resource for a scholar or designer.

Retrograde?

My thesis explores 20th century revival textile design, and as part of this project I am studying the Art-In-Trades Club of New York, which was active during the first half of the century. This organization endorsed the use of museum collections (specifically those at the Met) in industrial design. Its members believed the motto of the American designer should be "the old in the new," and their exhibitions during the 1920s championed period styles.

I have been reading both primary and secondary literature related to this topic, and I'm having a difficult time with both standard design history and scholarly discussion of what was Modern, with a capital M. Period style, in comparison to Modernism, is still viewed as retrograde, but even modern objects have elements of historicism, some glaring.

As food for thought (or eye candy?) I'm including an example of wallpaper, which I will talk about next time. Guess when this dates from?