Interiors
Modernism – Innovating Design Styles in the 20th Century
Modernism is a term the art and design community of our contemporary western world has adopted to describe a diverse range of architectural and interior decorative styles, as well as applied and graphic arts created between approximately 1880 and 1940 on an international scale.
Mossgreen Auctions – Collection Thomas Hamel and Martyn Cook
On May 20 at Sydney Mossgreen Auctions will offer for sale a collection from Thomas Hamel Interiors and Martyn Cook Antiques of art antiques and decorative arts
Thomas Chippendale – Eighteenth Century English Furniture
An 18th century village master craftsman, who designed and made furniture in rural Yorkshire Thomas Chippendale (1718 – 1779) was a progressive ambitious chap
What is an Antique?
What is an Antique? An antique is something made in a previous era. However, according to antique dealers, their associations and the tax man, it is not really that simple at all.
Thomas Jefferson at Monticello – to See and be Seen
Throughout his life Thomas Jefferson was continually putting his house Monticello up or pushing it down as his knowledge and experience of life and architecture expanded.
Gertrude Jekyll & Edwin Lutyens – The English House & Garden
The agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century removed land as the chief source of wealth in England. By 1901 money to pay for a country house had to be made in urban centres of trade or, in the countries that made up the British Empire. Building a house in the country made to appear as old and as venerable as the countryside itself was the ideal. Stylistically they looked back to the English vernacular tradition, which had been modified in response to the differing requirements of affluent clients. In this creative climate of possibilities architect Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) and gardener Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) became names well known.
Extravagant Inventions – The Roentgen Family Cabinetmakers
Later this year in The Met at New York will be a landmark exhibition of the furniture from the German Roentgen family cabinetmaking firm in operation c1740-1795
Heaven on Earth? – Palladian Villa at Padua nearby to Venice
The precise location of heaven on earth has never really been established. However it could be at the Villa Moro Malipiero at Padua, nearby to Venice in Northern Italy.
Archaeology – Uncovering the Past to Help Invent the Future
Without romantic enthusiasm attached to a hunt for hidden treasures the true wealth of our cultural heritage would never have been re-discovered at all.
Planning Savvy, Sustainable City Environs – Being Eco-Smart
Delivering sustainable communities is big business. We need to fast-track informed, intelligent decisions and solutions for managing natural, urban and virtual environments. A lot will depend on creatively connecting communities globally, as well as computing the right answers.
Lord Byron – A Rock Star Poet in an Age of Extravagance
For historians the Regency era in England is about romantics and revolutionaries, poets and princes, architects and artists. It was a paradox where extremes met
What Is Art Deco – Does it Celebrate Life as Art?
Art Deco was about integrating contemporary living with art, and turning life into art, against those consciously working for the undoing of art and its purpose was enjoyment.
Giuseppe Castiglione – Painter @ Court of Chinese Emperors
It was during the Yuan dynasty (c1260-1368) that knowledge of ancient Cathay (China) first filtered through to the west. Mongolian leader Kublai Khan gained the title Great Khan, by defeating his brothers and embracing Chinese culture. In 1260 Kublai Khan (1215-1294) set about rebuilding the city of Peking as his winter capital, governing along Chinese [...]
Abydos & Herculaneum – Helping Us to Understand Antiquity
Professor David O’Connor and Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill have spent a great deal of time excavating and conserving the sites of Abydos in Egypt and Herculaneum in Italy respectively. Both continue to yield spectacular discoveries invaluable to classical historians and the world at large.
The Mistress and the Consort – Paying the Wages of Beauty
Jeanne Becu managed to make Louis XV forget his sorrows and, the fact that he was sixty. By all accounts she displayed genuine compassion and affection for the melancholy old man so haunted by death. Even the discovery she was not married did not dissuade the King arranging a fraudulent marriage that would make her the very infamous Comtesse du Barry. Marie Antoinette as wife and consort of his successor Louis XVI was painted several times by the artist Marie Élisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842). Woman of complexity and contradictions, the Queen and the Consort lived during a time of society scandal and political turmoil.
PostModern – Pursuing the Past to Attain the Peak of Chic
Postmodernism (1970-1990) ranged from fashion to folly, from the luxurious to the ludicrous, from theory to theatre as it spawned out of control consumerism. It also grew a corporate design culture, which became encircled by money, wealth and power. Stylistically and realistically it all had to come to an end. Finally it collapsed under the weight of its own success.
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