Archibald Knox and Liberty of London are names inextricably linked, especially when we consider the up swell of indigenous British design at the beginning of the twentieth century.  “Advanced” design (as it was referred to at that time – we call it Modernism), stemming from the historical revivalist principles of William Morris, the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Aesthetic Movement, was starting to appeal to a wider audience. Arts and Crafts Movement designers and the Guilds were happy to provide for them. Into the centre of this expansion stepped Arthur Lasenby Liberty, a far-sighted and hard-headed businessman with a flair for sniffing out new artistic trends and capitalising upon them. By 1875 his emporium on London’s Regent Street was already brimming with Oriental metalwork and lacquer, exotic Eastern fabrics and “mediaeval” German pewterware.

He was certain he could do better by manufacturing and designing at home, and cast around for suitable designers. In his net he caught Archibald Knox, and a great partnership was born, albeit one rarely acknowledged publicly. Business was business for Liberty, and his designers were not expected to have a profile themselves. This, however, suited Knox – a man of extreme self-effacement and with a dislike of public attention. Knox was a Manxman, born in 1864. His life on the Isle of Man, a stronghold of Celtic lore, was to have the most profound effect on his life as a designer.

Time, an enemy for us all by Archibald Knox

As a child, and a budding artist, Archibald Knox was powerfully impressed by the illustrative aspect of Celtic culture: the fine carved stone crosses scattered over the island; the intricate “lacing” and colour of illuminated manuscripts such as Ireland’s ninth century Book of Kells; the entrelac sinuous twistings of ancient Celtic metalwork like the famous Tara Brooch and the Ardagh Chalice, viewed on visits to Dublin.

Rare Liberty & Co Pendant by Archibald Knox

He was a solitary boy, but made friends with an artistic circle of much older local painters. At Douglas Grammar School, he was introduced to archaeology and the study of earlier cultures. Picking up sea-tumbled semi-precious stones on local beaches – jasper, greenstone, coral – led to his later inspiration to set these simple stones into his silverwork.

Despite its small size, the Isle of Man was fortunate to have a vigorous and “venturesomely modern” Art School in Douglas. Archibald attended from 1878, when he was 14, until 1884. He specialised in the study of the “Design of Historic Ornament”, and passed with such distinction that he remained as an Art Master until 1888.

For the next 11 years, Knox occupied himself with illustrations for articles, many written by himself, which expanded knowledge of the Isle of Man’s history and its Celtic ornament. He sketched and painted watercolour landscapes prolifically, although these charming paintings were for his eyes only. In an interesting early collaboration, Knox worked with Baillie-Scott, an English designer recently moved to Douglas, who was to gain a reputation as a major arts and crafts architect and furniture designer. This contact linked Knox to a much wider exposure to European design and, perhaps as a direct result, in 1897 he accepted a teaching post at Redhill School of Art in Surrey, on the mainland.

In the same year that he moved from his island home, Knox also began designing for the Silver Studio, run by the young Rex Silver in Hammersmith, West London. From the Silver Studio, Knox’s first designs for Cymric silverware were sold to Liberty’s.

By 1900, Knox had become the principal designer for all of  Liberty’s “Celtic Revival” metalwork and jewellery ranges. The Cymric line was for silver, and the Tudric stamp was reserved for pewter pieces, but both metals were treated by Knox in a similar manner. His characteristic knotted, entrelac, soft-edged designs (often embellished with enamels or polished stones) became one of Liberty’s mainstays. The fluidity and daring of some of these marvellous objects produces a strong, almost visceral response. These are not designs of the intellect, despite their careful and controlled planning.

It is the soul which responds, recognising the fundamental connection with Nature potently expressed through Knox’s stylised designs. His pieces become instantly recognisable after only a short association.

By 1909 it seemed that the prevailing Liberty style was on the wane, since cheap copies by other firms were detracting from its initial impact. In any case, Knox was by this time teaching full-time at Kingston School of Art. He resigned abruptly in 1912 after criticism of his teaching methods. His life then became a rather sad series of displacements – from Philadelphia, to other parts of Pennsylvania, and to New York, searching for suitable employment and never really settling.

The years of the Great War saw him back in his beloved Isle of Man, working as a censor in an Alien Detention Centre. He returned to his old school in Douglas to teach in 1920. Painting and travel to Italy consumed his spare time until his sudden death in 1933 at the age of 69. His tombstone, naturally, is of his own design – a glorious interweaving of flowing lines around a Celtic cross in the cemetery at Braddon.

© Frances Laverack 1994 – 2012

Related posts:

1. Modernism – Innovating Design Styles in the 20th Century
2. Preserving Liberty and Law during the Enlightenment @ London
3. What Is: Art Nouveau, more than a tendril in time?

Gustave Klimt, leading artist of the Vienna Secession - Judith 1901 Oil on Canvas

The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century as it progressed rapidly changed the face of the western world. By the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe, England and America immense wealth generated a youthful society, one who had very different priorities and objectives than their parents or grandparents. They were clamouring for the best that life could offer. Their aspirations and expectations were different, their views less dogmatic, manners much smoother, prose lighter and morals and codes of conduct easier. At the time England was indisputably the greatest and richest nation in the world with no rivals seriously threatening its trade and industry. The upper and middle classes were enjoying supremacy.

Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality author and art critic John Ruskin 1819 – 1900 declared. A moral guide or prophet, if you like during the latter years of the nineteenth century in England Ruskin resented social injustice and the squalor that was a direct result of the ‘greed is good’ mentality that accompanied the unbridled capitalism brought about by the Industrial Revolution. His influence was profound on his both his contemporary colleagues and the next generation of artists and craftsmen. They would lead the way towards establishing Le Style Moderne.

Window from Hill House by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Vienna’s art world in the latter years of the nineteenth century, finally accepted the leadership role of the United Kingdom. in the world of innovation and design. Arts and Crafts leader William Morris and Scottish creative Charles Rennie Mackintosh fought to combat goods produced by machines by championing hand manufacturing. Charles Rennie Mackintosh cultivated a rigorous formal economy of design, which appealed to members of the newly established Viennese Secession.

They were a group of primarily young artists, painters, sculptors and architects in Vienna who seceded from the prestigious Kunsterhaus (Artists House) to set up a Society of Austrian Artists – the Vienna Secession. in I897. It included painted and illustrator Gustav Klimt. His brilliant individualism would dominate the era and his paintings set a stylistic tone that would resonate in far off places. His paintings lining the grand ascending staircase of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum reveal his movement towardthe hallmarks of a style that would become known as Art Nouveau.

The Secession staged their first exhibition in March 1898. Their aims were purely aesthetic and founded in Coffeehouse culture and the decorative arts magazine The Studio, which was devoured in all the capital’s stylish cafes.

Detail of the Secession building in Vienna, constructed by Joseph Maria Olbrich. It is one of the best known examples of Secessionist style of modern architecture.

Members of the Secession Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffman and Josef Maria Olbrich were so impressed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s austere aesthetic they invited him to come to Vienna and exhibit at the eighth Vienna Secession exhibition, which he did to critical acclaim.  Secession artists by their very nature were all fierce individuals striving to create a new style, one that would inform and help to imagine the future.

Vienna was struggling to leave behind its reputation for conservatism and the impact of the repressive political climate of their immediate past. Its citizens eagerly sought to embrace contemporary ideas and change under the influence and leadership of its artists, intellectuals and scientists.

Josef Hoffman in 1905-11 designed the Palais Stoclet in Brussels for Belgian industrialist Alfred Stoclet. It was a Villa built for a private financier who ‘wanted a large house, he loved the arts and gave us an entirely free hand’ said Hoffman.

It has been described as a universal, complete, flawless masterpiece of a thousand years of architectural history.

Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffman combine to produce the design and style of the Palais Stoclet's Dining Room

Modernism demanded a distinction between interior architecture and decoration and a preference for open planned living.

Modernist interiors were meant to be devoid of applied decoration. They seek to concentrate solely on geometry, uninterrupted lines and form.

At the Villa Stoclet the Dining Room contained murals by Gustav Klimt and furniture by Josef Hoffman. Harmony governed every facet of this total work of art and it became the extreme statement of Viennese avant-garde design.

It was ambitious, an accomplished achievement of the Wiener Werkstatte, (Vienna Workshops) founded by Hoffman in 1903. A strange astonishing edifice it might have come from another planet, it was in fact transposed far from the city of its conception to a setting, which is still alien to it. It exemplified in embryo the major features of the coming Art Deco movement of which it was one of the great founding monuments.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century rivals America, Germany and Japan threatened Britain’s manufacturing power. At home industrial unrest, growing feminist and socialist movements were part of a general, and protracted crisis. The population of the United Kingdom was 41.5 million in 1901, twenty percent living in poverty. Emmelline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 and it gained an international focus for militant action in the campaign for women’s suffrage. In Britain the Children’s Act of 1904 finally banned employment of children between nine at night and six in the morning.

A most profound influence in the UK and in America would be that of the long established system of French education in design and architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris. Its style of education was introduced into Britain amid scepticism, resentment and open hostility early in the twentieth century. Rejected previously, the Ecole’s approach to architecture laid heavy emphasis on distinct, formalized planning.

This is a school of design education founded that had no parallel in any other European country. It aimed at being and became a centre for intellectual debate about architecture during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Its teaching program was conceived as a preparation for the design of public buildings.

Tutors taught architects to work up their designs through a series of project stages. They employed the classical orders in the required ‘correct proportions’, but only once the plan was fully developed. The aim of every student was to win the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome established by Napoleon through the Academie des Beaux Arts, so they could spend a year studying in that city.

In England the Ritz Hotel on Picadilly is in the ‘Beaux Arts’ style. In America, the Biltmore Estate (pictured) was designed by the first American educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Paris, Richard Morris Hunt. His ‘French Chateau’ style house for George Washington Vanderbilt II, ate up much of the family fortune, installing such new innovations as electricity, which at the time was not even in the area.

The population of Britain in 1800 was 10 million. In 1881 it was 31 million and by 1911 there would be 11 million more to house, and the resultant prosperity was enjoyed most of all by the affluent middle classes. Within the years from 1895 to 1906 more buildings were built than ever before in Britain’s history. Speculative developers, who employed both run of the mill, designed houses, hotels, offices and factories and talented architects in an attempt to invent a new sought after British style. They were the ones who held sway.

Idealists such as William Morris in the latter part of the nineteenth century had championed good design for the poor and had been overwhelmed by the fact it was only those of affluence who could afford to buy what he had to offer. Would that he was in Inala at Brisbane in 2002, to see part of his vision achieved in the revamping of 50′s housing commission bungalows.

The King Edward VII Galleries at the British Museum are the most elegant of all the Beaux Arts influenced Edwardian classical buildings at London. They won a knighthood for their architect Webb J.J. Burnet. While great public buildings were passing through the decade of the High Baroque the Neo Georgian style in architecture was also being revived heavily in the suburbs.

This was a decade where the expansionist and imperialist features of the previous century were displayed to excess, one in which the political tensions and economic frailties of the present century before World War I became apparent. Radical change was required.

Spanish draughtsman, painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a dominating figure of early twentieth century French art. He, with French painter Georges Braque (1882-1963) founded classical Cubism. Braque working with Picasso from 1908 to 1914 to explore cubism thorough its various phases. When their association ended Picasso designed costume and sets for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. He was above all an innovator.

His portrait of Olga avoided illusionist realism, which he achieved by flattening the figure against its background. Picasso’s first wife Olga Stepanovna Khokhlova was a Ukrainian-Russian dancer.

She is one of the many women who shed their restricting corsets, cut their hair, raised their hemlines and set out to find what feminine freedom and being modern was all about following World War I.

World War One marked the great divide in the age of the moderns. The upheaval of war brought artists face to face with an alternative, either a clean sweep or hope of a reformed society, or alternatively the retention of a privileged art in the service of an elite and moneyed class. The streamlined success of the style Art Deco would be one answer, at least until World War Two, which would change the face of the world forever.

At London in the year of the second Olympic Games held in England the Victoria & Albert Museum, undoubtedly the world’s greatest museum of art and design, is hosting an important exhibition that encompasses the period between the first ‘austerity’ games held in London in 1948 and the games of the all new austerity age in 2012.

Innovation in the Modern Age (31st March – 12th August 2012) will explore British design in the interim and the tension in England between tradition and modernity, conservatism and contemporary design and the economic, political and cultural forces that have shaped its evolution.

Vienna also has many plans for 2012, namely to inspire its guests from all over the world with harmonious diversity.

They have announced 2012 is their Gustav Klimt year and there are two exhibitions of his works opening in February.

Klimt´s key paintings will set the stylistic tone for his world-famous work from about 1900 onwards. They are at the center of a show “Gustav Klimt at the Kunsthistorisches Museum“.

“Klimt: Up Close and Personal. Images, Letters, Insights” at the Leopold Museum will focus on the artist´s numerous travels as well as the the fact that he incorporated his impressions and observations during his travels into his paintings.

The styles that made up the Modern Movement are known as:
Arts and Crafts 1875-1915
Art Nouveau (1880-1910)
Wiener Werkstatte (1903-1933) and Bauhaus (1919-1933)
Art Deco (1920-1940)

Carolyn McDowall, The Culture Concept Circle 2012

NB: The dates are but a guide as all styles, as they rise and fall, overlap each other.

Related posts:

1. The Power of Art and Design in the Modern Age at Vienna
2. EVOLUTION OF ART, DESIGN & STYLE
   Course Outline
3. Archibald Knox, Liberty of London and Modernism

New Zealand designer, David Trubridge's Float Bed Designed for Dreaming

Since ancient times men and women have had a very real need for sleep, love and dreams. Over the centuries the bed gradually became the most important piece of furniture in the house, and a very real symbol of rank, wealth and power through its association with fertility. The idea of ‘ making a bed ‘ evolved from the early Saxon tradition of filling sacks with hay, and it is a term we have used ever since.

The whole idea of occupying a single chamber to sleep in became a reality during the so-called middle ages, a period in history that spans from the fifth, to the end of the fifteenth century. It was a luxury enjoyed only by a privileged few. The main ‘ chamber’ was about receiving guests, conducting business, as well as a hundred and one other activities, which included sleeping in a set up similar to our modern idea for ‘open plan living’. People traveling in regions previously frequented by outlaws and marauding tribes sought shelter in great castles where sleep became a communal affair – the sharing of rooms, or beds, recognized as a mark of political esteem or as a symbol of arms laid to rest.

Detail late nineteenth century wool embroidery on a linen bed curtain

By the sixteenth century producing an heir to carry on the family name, increase its wealth and uphold its traditions was of increasing importance, as was the obligation for offering hospitality. During this time the bed gained a great deal in importance and as privacy became an issue long curtains, suspended from hooks on the ceiling,  protected occupants from the gaze of others or servants who bedded down on straw pallets nearby.

Curtains aided warmth and repelled horrendous draughts in vast stone former strongholds struggling to become noble dwellings, rather than just bastions of defence. Textiles were an expensive commodity and bed curtains a ‘luxury item’ and very prestigious.  If fabric covered the whole bed it was a symbol of absolute nobility and wealth. Early bed hangings were often made of wool, embroidered with flame or crewel stitch with heavy tapestries also popular. Canopies evolved, attached to the ceiling, enabling curtains to be suspended underneath. During the day they were tied up or ‘bagged’ out of the way.

Infamous Great Bed of Ware, now restored

During the sixteenth century Diane de Poitiers the famous mistress of Henry II of France associated herself with Diana, the Roman goddess of women and childbirth. The crescent moon was her symbol, intertwined with the initials of her famous lover, decorated the wooden paneling on her bedchamber’s walls. Diane, like all well educated women of her time, knew to heighten her desirability by contrasting the whiteness of her skin against the black satin sheets on which she lay.

Next to Diane de Poitiers bed was the symbol for her lover, King Henri II in the panelling.

Sixteenth century beds had four posts to support a wooden canopy with a headboard and footboard, elaborately carved, our ancestors lavishing great funds on this piece of furniture that nurtured life from conception to birth through life and finally, death.

Many a sixteenth and seventeenth century man embarked on a ‘business trip’ leaving his wife behind, to enjoy the spectacular orgies held in the Great Bed of Ware. Originally housed in the White Hart Inn in Ware, England it could accommodate some 15 people including on the pull out beds hidden underneath the great bed.

A high degree of comfort and convenience would become a priority in grander homes during the seventeenth century and the bedchamber was often used to receive guests. Some bedchambers gained a close stool ensuite and mirrors, with glass now being able to made in larger pieces, were becoming an essential requirement for any lady of style.

From the beginning of the Renaissance to the French Revolution the bedchamber and the bed flourished along with the fortunes of Central Europe.

Seventeenth century Dutch Bedchamber, note the interior close stool in its own recess with a door - very avante garde

In the seventeenth century Louis XIV, The Sun King led the way. From 1701 his bedchamber occupied the exact centre of the chateau as he was the Sun King, and around him everything revolved. He devised ceremonies and elaborate rituals to keep his nobles at court, out of mischief and well entertained, so they could not plot against him. In his bedchamber he held his famous state rising and retiring ceremonies.

The bed was designed to stand out from the centre of the wall, which became known as the aristocratic position. It was placed behind a balustrade where the King could only be attended by men of noble blood. The elaborate hangings were changed from winter to summer and it was here you presented petitions and ask for jobs or favours.  The crowd approached the great man hopefully via the official path progressing along the axis of honour (the enfilade), which could take days to achieve.

More than often, those he really wanted to talk to intimately were quietly brought up the backstairs into the privacy of his closet, a small room off the bedchamber, where favours were generally secured. At Versailles a gilded carving above Louis’ bed represented “France watching over the King in his slumber” and in 1715 he, who had made the bedchamber ‘the sanctuary of royalty’, finally died”.

The great tradition of State Beds in England was established late in the seventeenth century when Charles II returned from an exile spent at the courts of France and Holland. The bedchamber gained additional furniture with chairs and stools upholstered ensuite, a mirror, table and stand, often in walnut, marquetry or lacquer.

Looks like a lover has fled the seventeenth century bedchamber after a confrontation with a husband?

The Melville Bed designed by Daniel Marot, upholstered by Francis Lapiere London 1700 Oak, pine. The bed was an extraordinary commission, made in 1700 for George, 1st Earl of Melville for the Apartment of State at his new Palace. V & A Museum, London

The Melville Bed is one of the most spectacular exhibits at the V & A Museum at London.

Designed by French Huguenot Daniel Marot, the son of a distinguished French architect and engraver it still retains its original luxury hangings of crimson Genoa velvet, backed by ivory Chinese silk damask linings embroidered with crimson silk trimmings

Marot had left for Holland a year before Louis XIV revoked the continually controversial Edict of Nantes. He had worked in the French royal drawing office in his youth and because he was in Holland when the Edict of Nantes was revoked he was exiled from his homeland and so could not return.

He settled, entering the service of William of Orange in 1686 and becoming his Master of Works responsible for the decoration of the Palace at Het Loo, bringing his knowledge of Parisian design and decoration in the most advanced form. He went to England with William and Mary when they accepted the invitation to rule jointly on the throne of England after James II had fled the country in 1688. At first beds were brought over from France, but within a short time Marot had appointed upholders and manufacturers to fulfill his design commissions.

Marot’s genius lay in his ability to view a complete interior and demonstrate how unity of design could be applied to the decoration of a room as a whole, and he was one of the first designers to do so. His work in England was to have  a profound effect on the history of interior design.

The Canopy at Hardwick Hall, note the Oak Tree to the right and left of the coat of arms. It signifies the strength and endurance of the indomnitable, Bess of Hardwick

Beautiful English needlework used for hangings were masterpieces of the upholsterer’s art, as at the first English Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole’s house, Houghton Hall and at Hardwick Hall the embroideries on the canopy of the State Bed were among the finest in the country.

Bess of Hardwick outlasted four husbands, becoming wealthier on each occasion. Her bed hangings were embroidered with all manner of flora and fauna, including the oak tree, a symbol of her own personal fortitude and strength.

Now bed bugs are not usually associated with the Age of Elegance, however, they plagued Europe for centuries. In the seventeenth century authorities suggested linen overalls should be worn over the clothes in bed and undergarments made lice proof by lining them with taffeta!

Samuel Pepys, the English diarist recorded ‘ he had found a bed, good but lousy’, which sounds rather odd, and poor Lord Herbert lamented ‘he saw hundreds of bugs on their march home, full of prey’, as he had been bitten ‘on a very tender part, which I shall forbear mentioning and which we Brittons think the best part of the bullock to make steak of’.

During the eighteenth century seasoned travelers on their Grand Tour of Europe sent their servants ahead to attend to such matters. Bed pests did not have any respect for rank. Bug men abounded, and a certain Mr. Tiffin secured precedence over all others through his advertisement in Bell’s Weekly Messenger of 1814

May the Destroyers of Peace
Be Destroyed by Us
Tiffin and Son
Bug-Destroyers to her Majesty

An eighteenth century French bedchamber from a detailed painted picture on porcelain

‘I mostly find the bugs in the bedsteads’, he said, ‘but if left unmolested, they get numerous and climb to the tops of the rooms, they’re very high minded and prefer lofty places’.

The formal layout of houses with the main bedchamber at the end of a succession for rooms was breaking down by the middle of the eighteenth century. The increasing desire for families to seek privacy away from the public gaze, the introduction of a room for dining in, were factors in altering the structure of how houses were laid out.

In France by the mid eighteenth century a luxurious bedchamber featured superb parquetry flooring and gilded mirrors whose candles were disposed on the frames to refract the light.

The Bed had gained silk hangings with the addition of ‘tie backs’ as well as huge pillows and bolsters for comfort.

The bed would also feature a counterpane (bedspread) . Young mothers received their friends following the birth of a child and they brought the traditional French gift of cone paper packages filled with delicious, delicate confectionary (dragées).

Scottish architect Robert Adam completed his Grand Tour and introduced his neoclassical taste into England on his return in 1758, setting up shop in London. The neoclassical movement has been likened to a new Renaissance particularly in terms of house layout and decoration. Instead of living life on one level important reception rooms moved down to the ground floor with bedchambers remaining on the first level. His predecessors would not have understood the term ‘going up to bed’.

Bedchamber Nostell Priory with original furniture by Thomas Chippendale

Cabinet Bed designed by Scottish Architect Robert Adam made by Thomas Chippendale for Actor David Garri

Adam and Yorkshire cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale were an eighteenth century phenomenon. They worked in many houses together and the bedchambers were embellished with beautiful Chinese wallpapers, festoons, garlands of flowers and classical motifs, with furniture and furnishings becoming lighter and more elegant.

The bedchamber at Nostell Priory originally decorated by Adam and furnished with polished or painted timber and upholstered furniture by Chippendale has had its original hangings replaced.

Nostell Priory in Norfolk is home to one of the largest and most diverse collections of furniture by Thomas Chippendale in the world, all of which was made especially for the house.  A floor of bedchambers not ever seen before have, in 2009, been handed over to the trust for viewing from 2010.

Adam also designed a piece of furniture that looks like a bookcase, but originally was made to contain a bed, which folded up inside.  Attributed to Chippendale’s workshop it was later converted into a wardrobe. A folding bed allowed a bedroom to be used as an extra living room during the day.

This bed is part of a group of furniture preserved because it belonged to the celebrated actor David Garrick (1717-1779). It was made for the guest bedroom at his country villa at Hampton, Middlesex.

Josephine's Bedroom at château de Malmaison

The room also contained armchairs, a sofa, a dressing-table and a wardrobe, all painted blue and white to match with blue silk upholstery and curtains. Contemporary Americans admired furniture designed by Chippendale and Neoclassical architect Robert Adam’s designs as well as the French idea of changing hangings from winter to summer and they were all taken up with great alacrity becoming part of an ongoing tradition.

Early in the nineteenth century, during the reign of Napoleon as Emperor of France, the severity of the Empire style was softened by the use of exquisite silks, sheer and opaque fabrics.

Empress Josephine had official architects Charles Percier and Pierre Leonard Fontaine design a magnificent bedchamber in her country house at Malmaison, after she had been put aside by Napoleon so he could marry again in order to gain an heir.

Her bedchamber was a triumph. The bed was raised on a dais for maximum effect, an eagle atop the canopy.

The walls hung with drapery, tent style, with slender gilded columns holding up the richly embossed ceiling painted with clouds and using Napoleons’ preferred colours – Scarlet red, for blood perhaps? and Gold, undoubtedly for Glory!

Bedchamber of Juliette Recamier

The Empire style of Napoleon and Josephine was enormously influenced in its early stages by a beautiful young woman who moved in elite circles Madame Juliette Recamier (1777 – 1849).

Contemporary descriptions tell us, ‘walked like a goddess on the clouds and her voice thrilled the senses’. She dressed in a cloud of diaphanous white mousseline, never wore diamonds only pearls, and appealed to romantic sensibility, wearing crowns of real pansies and cornflowers on her head and posies on her gown. Juliette was married at 15 to the wealthy banker Jacques Recamier.

In 1798 he bought a house for her on the rue deu Mont-Blanc, which he employed the architect Berthaut to furnish in the Greek Style.

Juliette insisted on having flowers everywhere, even on the stairs, and would greet invited guests with a charming smile and invite them to see her famous bedroom.

The bed itself was raised on a dais, and declared the most beautiful in Paris, against its background of mirrored walls, draped as it was in a froth of transparent gauze, a white vapor falling from the ceiling, surrounded by vases and candelabra, and an artificial rose tree.

Her bathroom was described as ‘rich and choice’, the bath itself hidden under a red stuffed top when not in use.

After 1830 in Europe cities became overcrowded with little or no suitable restraints on birth control. Coupled with advances in medical practice survival for large families was ensured and elaborate beds once again stood in the main chamber being used for a whole range of family activities

Early Oak Bed in Kelmscott Manor designed and worked by May Morris, daughter of William Morris, Morris & Co Embroiderers. The Bedcover was embroidered by Jane Morris, William Morris's wife

In Victorian England increasing industrial wealth meant country houses expanded.

William Morris La Belle Iseult 1851

Self-contained bedchambers accommodated guests at weekend parties with clever hostesses arranging their occupation to suit the games played ‘ after dark’.

Walter Scott’s tales of Knights of the Round Table had every late nineteenth century woman panting at the thought of Sir Galahad arriving on his white charger to carry her off!

Love was considered superior to sex, conducted on a higher plane involving much talk of the ‘passion of the soul’.

Arts and Crafts Designer William Morris, leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, depicted his wife Janey Burden, as Le Belle Iseaut in 1858 in her bedchamber, her bed in disarray, its bed hangings ‘ bagged’ as in the middle ages.

Janey became, like all the other women of her age, guardian angels of the hearth and upholders of the sacred values of the Victorian home. Her husband William’s ideal of womanhood exemplified the treasured image shared by most men for that of a medieval damozel at work upon the hangings for her castle bedchamber.

Mae West

The aesthetic movement towards the end of the nineteenth century in Europe and England preached beautiful surroundings, promoted spiritual and mental health.

The rose motif and white paint became popular with followers of Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who was a very influential designer during this period, especially in Germany and Austria.

It also became fashionable for the modern women to assert themselves and become involved directly in the decoration of their homes; a display of taste as important as dressing well and looking beautiful.

In America following World War One Hollywood movie stars became guardians of our morals. They were required to keep one foot firmly on the floor during scenes taking place in what was now known as the bedroom.

Popular star Mae West, fearful of the damaging effects of sunlight and fresh air on her beauty, kept her blinds permanently drawn, the air conditioner humming and those lucky enough to come up to see her sometime discovered that her mirrored’ boudoir revealed all!

Contemporary Zen Bedroom courtesy Robertsons Furniture

The bedchamber or bedroom today is a comfortable and familiar friend, one in which the most significant thresholds of our experiences are crossed, enveloping us in its warmth and security.

It provides a place in which we are free to consider the consequences of our days while we progressively plan for the happiness of all our tomorrows.

‘ and so to Bed, pray, wish us all good rest!
Sleep tight, oh, and don’t let the bed bugs bite!’

Carolyn McDowall The Culture Concept Circle 2010, 2011

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1. Women of Influence, Marquise de Pompadour
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3. Love Jewellery – Romantics to Retro

The Arming and Departure of the Knights. Number 2 of the Holy Grail tapestries woven by Morris & Co. 1891-94 for Stanmore Hall. This version woven by Morris & Co. for Lawrence Hodson of Compton Hall 1895-96. Wool and silk on cotton warp. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Historically tapestry is a fabric heavy with meaning and intention. In the late nineteenth century, at the advent of what is now called Modernism, English designer and social activist William Morris (1834- 1896) rebelled against the ugliness of his countries ever expanding industrial age, becoming an advocate not only for a different work ethic, but also a new aesthetic. In the age of Arts & Crafts Morris believed human beings of every race and culture should be able, in an atmosphere of peace, simplicity and grace, gain pleasure from their everyday surroundings.

The Failure of Sir Gawaine: Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine at the Ruined Chapel, Number 4 of the Holy Grail tapestries woven by Morris & Co. 1891-94 for Stanmore Hall. This version woven by Morris & Co. for Lawrence Hodson of Compton Hall 1895-96. Wool and silk on cotton warp. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

He said ‘The age is ugly…if a man nowadays wants to do anything beautiful, he must choose the epoch which suits him and identify himself with that’. He looked back to the medieval age for inspiration for establishing his contemporary tapestry workshop and also began a quest to expand knowledge through the arts.

His commission of six tapestries for William Knox D’arcy’s Dining Room at Stanmore Hall in Middlesex illustrated the story of the Holy Grail quest, as told in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. They took five years to weave and are considered among the most significant works made during the nineteenth century when romanticism was at its height. They paint a beguiling picture of lovely maidens and dashing knights in a style that was very appealing. The original tapestries were sold off after 1920 and are now scattered in various private collections and galleries around the world.

Tapestry and embroidery are both forms of textile art. However both have very different techniques and the difference is not always understood. Tapestry is a thick textile fabric in which weft threads are woven (originally by hand) into warp threads fixed lengthwise onto a loom and pictures or designs are created as the weaver progresses. Embroidery is the enrichment of a flat foundation using needle, coloured silks and cottons, gold and silver thread or other extraneous material.

Tapestry Book Cover, Sheldon Workshops 1614

From the eleventh century onward tapestry gradually became a great symbol of status and influence. By the fourteenth century in Europe was the greatest of all the forms of artistic expression. Subsequently they became spoils of war, as knights traveled around Europe and also during the early crusades of European knights into the Holy Land.

Tapestries were often woven in sets to enrich early Christian church interiors edifying worship by illustrating biblical stories. They dramatized the lives of saints and martyrs reinforcing and demonstrating the tenets of Christian belief. They also supported other image art forms such as stained glass windows and statuary.

The Fates in antiquity represented the personification of the inescapable destiny of man.

Layer upon layer of meaning was built up using symbolism to illustrate the writings of medieval Christian mystics and others. It is important in our understanding of why this was so is that the majority of the population was for centuries totally illiterate. Teaching through imagery was how they gained an understanding of the world they lived in and their heritage. Subsequently their visual awareness was more than likely much more acute than ours is today.

In Greek Mythology the three Goddesses of Destiny and Fate were dressed in draped white cloth. They were the so called ‘three fates’, an image that has long been captured in many formats depicting them weaving the threads of destiny.

Lachesis determined the length of thread – the period of one’s life, Klotho combed the wool and spun the thread of life and Atropos wove the thread into the fabric of one’s actions.  So the belief was that it didn’t matter what you decided you couldn’t really escape a pre-ordained destiny. The priests of the temple were the oracles, seers and its no coincidence that clergy are regarded as ‘men of the cloth’.

Sixteenth Century Tapestry Detail Fabulous Beast

The qualities that were the special characteristic, or hallmarks of what would become the fully developed European Medieval Art of Tapestry were excellence in design, crispness of execution, wonderful depth of tone, superb richness and exquisite gradations of colour.

The colours were natural dyes set by mordants such as Alum a necessary process in fixing the dye to the wool. Owning deposits of Alum at that time was a sure way to wealth and in today’s terms could be compared to owning your own oil wells. Secular themes included ancient tales of Greek and Roman mythology, aspects of love, as well as contemporary conflicts and revelry.

The symbolism attached to numbers and animals was also of major significance assisting in conveying a message, moral or otherwise, about the glory and welcome abundance of creation. Designs were created as the weaver progressed out of their imagination or from documentary evidence we have, from about the fourteenth century from a cartone (It. broad sheet of paper) or cartoon (drawing or painting).

Superb 'Hercules' Tapestry from Arras

Some of these very earliest cartoons still in existence were hardly more than sketches and it was quite common for weavers to exercise their own flair by adding a small animal or a particular expression to a face ensuring that each work had its own peculiar characteristics and features. Some however were by such famous artists as Italian Renaissance master Raphael.

Of the notable centres where the industry of tapestry-weaving has been in considerable practice, Arras in the 14th and 15th centuries, Brussels in the 15th and 16th, Middelburg and Delft in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries and down to the present time, the English Cotswolds Workshop of William Sheldon in the 16th century and Mortlake  during the 17th century, probably standing foremost; from them the services of experienced workmen equipped with frames and implements were requisitioned and secured at most of the short-lived contemporaneous.Sheldon’s craftsmen were mainly Dutch protestants fleeing religious persecution.

A tapestry of the 'Verdure' type

Flanders remained a key centre for European tapestry production while in Germany and Switzerland a cottage industry grew up producing smaller works on a commercial basis.  These workshops produced an abundance of pastoral scenes and what we know as the ‘verdure type’ one that has predominantly blue and green colouring of landscapes with streams and waterfalls and an emphasis on trees, foliage and fauna.

The Lady and the Unicorn - Sight

In the late medieval period of the fifteenth century the now famous mille fleurs tapestries appeared characterized by their backgrounds being made of hundreds of tiny flowers. The word millefleurs is French for “a thousand flowers” and as a background for a tapestry they were considered the height of fashion and sophistication.

Tapestries sparkle with a profusion of amazingly intricate blooms providing the perfect foil for scenes depicting late Medieval hunts and courtly love.

Although the precise origin of the millefleurs motif is open to speculation, one possible suggestion is that this technique was an attempt to preserve year round images of fleeting flowers.

Speculation aside, the thousand flowers style clearly continues to delight viewers, even after all of these centuries.

The most famous of these are the six tapestries in the series known as La Dame á la Licorne.

They have been on display at the National Musee du Moyen Age (formerly Cluny) at Paris since 1883.

This group of tapestries features an enchanting combination of deep red ground strewn with an abundance of flowers.

Woven from a combination of woollen, silk and gold thread these fabulous wall hangings have exercised an almost universal fascination on all those who have encountered them for hundreds of years.

The Lady and the Unicorn - Sound

In the nineteenth century Prosper Merimé Inspector of Historic Monuments drew the attention of authorities to the beauty and importance of the tapestries after finding them hanging on damp walls in the rat ridden Chateau at Boussac in 1835.

They were still there in 1844 when renowned novelist of her day, George Sand mentioned them in her novel Jeanne and endeavoured to use her influence to have them removed to safety.

They were still there in 1853 when Baron Aucapitaine drew the attention of Edmond du Sommerard, Curator of the Cluny Museum at Paris who negotiated long and hard to secure them and they were officially inaugurated in 1883.

Every detail delights the eye; their superb contrasting colours create a unique impression of harmony.

The background is made up of flowers and trees found in France at that time. They are combined with familiar animals such as foxes, dogs and ducks all mingling with exotic creatures such as panthers, cheetahs and lions.

They are meant to intrigue and they do. Our gaze lingers longest, and perhaps with a curious pleasure on that mythological beast with the body of a horse, the head of a goat and a horn the unicorn. He is worth an essay of his own.

To this we must add the beautiful centrally focused Lady. Each time she is depicted in an ordinary every day attitude although she is dressed in different costumes historically so it is she who creates the aura of mystery, one that has endured.

Lady and the Unicorn Tapestry - Taste

Who was this lady? Did she represent some famous person or is she…as some scholars claim, an allegory of the Blessed Virgin.

Does the crescent motif repeated constantly in each work suggest a fascination with the East or is it an allusion to her being aligned with the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman Diana).

History has since destroyed most theories and many questions still remain obscure. What we do know is that the Coat of Arms belong to a family from the region of Lyon. Jean le Viste had a distinguished record of service to the King as President of the Court of Aids. The tapestries proclaim the high position he held and reflect his personal glory.

The lion and the unicorn, in some instances, appear to have been just plucked off a coat of arms to flank the figures and give them authority. Each composition is skilfully rendered and the beauty of their draughtsmanship is striking. Brocades, velvets, silks and jewels have all been rendered in wool with surprising exactitude and the detailing of the mille fleurs or thousands of flowers, is impressive.

Lady and the Unicorn Tapestry - Touch

Five of the tapestries represent the important senses; smell, hearing, taste, touch and sight. Five is a powerful number in symbolism.

Early cultures believed the five senses were a facet of the creation of man and sacred, to the extent to which you consider a human being to be sacred, or at least potentially so.

Earth, air, fire and water are all basic constituents of the temporal realm with the Spirit or God at its epicenter.

Lady and the Unicorn Tapestry - Desire

Then there is the sixth tapestry with its tent studded with golden tear drops, its flaps framing the brocade be-gowned and be-jewelled young lady drawing all eyes to the central scene where she is replacing jewels in a casket lending credence to the moral significance of the inscription a mon seul désir…’freedom from the passions provoked by ill controlled senses’.

But is she receiving them or sending them back? Therein lies another story. Two important details still elude researchers; the personality of the artist who designed the tapestries for Jean le Viste and the place where they were woven.

In the end if you take your needle or work at your pattern it will come out all right and endure, just like the threads of destiny. Life is like that; one stitch at a time taken patiently.

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning**

© Carolyn McDowall The Culture Concept, 2009 – 2011

*Alfred Lord Tennyson – Sir Galahad
**Henry Ward Beecher 1813-1887

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In England, during the second half of the nineteenth century, painter, writer, textile designer and social activist William Morris (1834-1896) became the motivational leader of a revival in arts and crafts that encompassed all the visual arts, especially architecture and interiors. The Arts and Crafts movement he led in England had ramifications that spread world wide. Morris believed in a Utopian style of socialism and his affinity with natural handcrafted wares was doggedly pursued.

Like many of his peers William Morris was trying to help the people of his time to find their way in a world moving forward at a very fast pace. Sound familiar? He said ‘The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life’. During  his lifetime Morris produced hundreds and hundreds of designs for textiles, including tapestries and hand woven carpets. His inspiration for their composition was both nature and the medieval world. He wanted to find a way out of industrial ugliness, back to the joys of creation experienced in the ‘Golden Age’ of English history when Elizabeth 1 was on the throne. It was perceived, romantically, as being a much simpler time when life was lived at a pace that was manageable. Challenging industrial age leaders to produce handcrafted goods was indeed a lofty ideal.

There was however two realities. The first that it was profit driving the market for William Morris products being sold through Morris & Co, which he founded in 1861. The second was the aims he and his peers (like art critic John Ruskin and designer Auguste Welby Pugin) extolled ended up being an example of hypocrisy, because so many manufacturers were producing a superior ‘hand crafted’ product in dirty, overcrowded sweatshops, where most of the workers were children.

The exploitation of working class children as cheap labour was vital to the economic success Britain enjoyed during the nineteenth century. For many working class families, it was far more important for a child to bring home a wage than to have an education. The combination of dangerous working conditions and long hours meant that children were worked as hard as any adult, but without laws to protect them. Children were cheaper to employ than adults, and easier to discipline. With the tide of public opinion changing government legislation in 1844, 47, 50, 53 and 1867 regulated that no one could employ children under 8. In 1867 8 – 13 year old workers had their hours reduced so they could receive 10 hours education per week, again exploited. It would not be until the closing years of the century that the majority children began to be treated as children, not miniature adults.

Watch the Video and Read On

In 1858 Morris’s friend and colleague architect Phillip Speakman Webb built the Red House for he and his family.

When it was completed in 1860, it was described by British Pre-Raphaelite Painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) as ‘the beautifullest place on earth’.

Today the house retains many of its original features including furniture by Morris and Philip Webb, ceiling paintings by Morris, wall-hangings designed by Morris and worked by himself and his wife Jane, furniture painted by Morris and Pre-Raphealite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and wall-paintings and stained- and painted glass designed by Edward Burne-Jones.

It was designed to reflect a man’s house was his castle and,  for its time, it was completely revolutionary.

To complete the Red House Webb borrowed handmade red bricks from the Tudor period, inserted circular windows from the Italian Renaissance period, as well as small-paned sash windows from the English Georgian age.

Many of the windows are surmounted by pointed Gothic (relieving/set back) arches as described in the treatise of first century Roman architect Vitruvius and used by sixteenth century architect Andrea Palladio.

Its steeply graded roof is reminiscent of chateaux in France and its hand laid roof tiles are made of natural slate. They acted as an electrical insulator, were fireproof and had an extremely low water absorption rate.

The roof allowed water or melting snow to run into wide gutters and be recycled via a ‘well’ in the garden, which symbolically and practically became the ‘font’ of the house.

His ‘middling’ English house was, at least for Morris, a place ‘after his own heart’ a most noble work…more a poem than a house…but an admirable place to live in to’.

It was refreshingly simple and Morris was well pleased with it. It was a kind of moral architecture if you like, paying tribute to England’s ‘golden age’, while reflecting the needs of a contemporary middle class citizen and craftsman such as himself. The Arts and Crafts styled building symbolized warmth and shelter, informality and welcome.

Between the wars the Arts & Crafts style burgeoned out into the suburbs of busy, bustling cities around the world calling upon rural traditions too, which signified order and stability.

St John’s Cathedral at Brisbane, Australia was the last Gothic Revival Style Cathedral in the world to be completed (2006). In the precinct is a number of buildings influenced by Arts and Crafts architecture, which was well underway in England when it was first being built (1906).

They included St Martin’s House, whose style was inspired by the philosophy of arts and crafts movement and The Red House.

Built following World War I of red brick, relieved by detailing in stone, it has a slated high sloping roof, Georgian style sash windows, Italian Renaissance touches, including a Juliet balcony.

There are also some delightful fanciful turret style chimneys at the roofline.

It has the addition of an extended room, surmounted by medieval battlements. Originally the main operating room of the hospital, it was converted into an office for the current Dean of the Cathedral, whose desk is sited over the main plumbing grate.

Set into an Italian terrazzo floor (now covered by carpet) this is where they hosed the blood after an operation. One could have a lot of fun with that…but we digress.

Morris and his associates introduced a new dimension to the reform of design and decoration. He explored, in particular, the techniques of traditional country furniture because it was not only the debased quality of contemporary furniture that alarmed him, but also the decline of ancient skills needed to produce a quality product.

They produced a line up of furniture designs that were a distinct breakaway from anything else the industrial era had offered. In America Gustave Stickley was a self appointed standard-bearer for the arts and crafts movement.

Through his factory stocked with everything needed to create the home beautiful he promoted and extended Morris’s principles in both an artistic and socialist sense. He targeted the average American homeowner, whose limited budget called for a subtle marketing technique.

He offered to ‘substitute the luxury of taste for the luxury of costliness’… employing those forms and materials made for simplicity, individuality and dignity of effect. His magazine The Craftsman evangelized through articles submitted by influential guest writer’s on such issues as style, home décor, urban landscapes and architecture. It was all about the home beautiful, and he supplied everything needed for those seeking to embrace the future in comfort and style.

All his life Morris tried to recreate the idyllic, almost medieval life; self sufficient, financially secure, practical in close contact with nature.  Morris described the Cotswold village of Bibury in Gloucestershire as ‘surely the most beautiful hamlet in England’.

In this he was both inspired and supported by art critic John Ruskin, whose thoughts had a profound influence on Victorian attitudes.

Morris tried to make his vision of beauty, an actual part of everyday life. He saw modern mechanical industry destroying ‘mans natural purpose and sense of life’

John Ruskin said he believed that working with the hands and producing arts and crafts were essential to the moral fibre of the home.

Objects were meant to be fashioned with great pride, integrity and attention to beauty. He sincerely feared without such a focus the quality of family life would be severely degraded and diminished.

Morris agreed. He said “If I were asked to say what is at once the most important product of Art, and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, a beautiful House. And that included everything and everyone inside it.

By now Morris and his family had a retreat in the countryside at Hammersmith overlooking the Thames. Kelmscott Manor is where he established the Kelmscott Press, the last great enterprise of his life.

Between 1891 and 1898 it produced 53 books (some 18,000 copies). The books Morris produced were modeled on books of the fifteenth century, such as those of printer Nicolaus Jenson of Venice, whose examples inspired the Roman ‘golden’ font Morris used.

Noteworthy for their harmony of type and illustration, the main priority was to have each book seen as a whole, re-awakening the early ideals of illuminated book design.

He wanted to inspire other printers in standards of production at a time when the printed page was generally at its poorest.Numerous other presses were set up to perpetuate Morris’ aims, including the Doves, Eragny, Ashendene and Vale Presses.

The enterprise was the culmination of Morris’s life as a craftsman in many diverse fields as he set out to prove the high standards of the past could be repeated – even surpassed – in the present.

William Morris died before the end of the century and did not live to see the success that the Arts and Crafts philosophy of he and his peers had on both sides of the Atlantic and in British colonies like Canada and Australia.

By 1901 the population of the United Kingdom was 41.5 million with twenty percent living in poverty. Emmelline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 and it became a focus for militant action in the campaign for women’s suffrage.

It was not until 1904 that the Children’s Act of 1904 officially banned employment of children between nine PM in the evening and six am in the morning.

A reaction to the  de-humanizing affect of late nineteenth century industrialism revived the artisan guild system, which was similar to that of medieval times. Its members were promoted as being merry and jolly and the offered an interesting role model for those searching for a panacea to escape the ills of the age.

The remedy lay in creating and constituting a new philosophy of life for the worker and so a traditional hero was revived. Britain’s great legendary medieval hero, Robin Hood, who had championed the working class man and his honest labour.

Robin was merry, his men were merry and, putting him forward to project an image of artisans happy at completing a days hard work, was instantly appealing.

His  popularity and merry image was re-affirmed when a movie emerged from the new glamorous, Art Deco loving capital of America, Hollywood in 1938 in a world torn asunder. Australian born Errol Flynn starred as the romantic hero Robin Hood romping through the movie, with his merry men and the lovely Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marion.

They both smiled a lot, as did his men,  and his merry disposition was completely infectious. In the movie the virtues of hearth and home in Sherwood Forest were about Spartan design and not only would this help reinforce the attitudes and philosophies, fashions and passions of the Arts and Crafts movement as it continued its merry way, but it would also help everyone survive the global conflict to come.

‘We are here to lead you back to the realities of life’, Morris had said, ‘to show you how to use your hands and your heads, which machines have already made over half of the population lose’.

The social ideal of the arts and crafts movement is ongoing. It was “The Art that is Life”.

Carolyn McDowall©The Culture Concept Circle 2010, 2011

Watch the trailer of Robin Hood, it should give your day a ‘boost’

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If I were asked…what is at once the most important product of Art, and the thing most to be longed for I should answer a beautiful House said

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He had started drawing when his grandmother gave him a box of sidewalk chalk. Very soon everyone was aware as he drew caricatures in his school books, that he was already mastering the skill of line and volume. Klee excelled at drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts at Munich in the latter years of the nineteenth century, where drawing was central to the creative process that led to being called ‘artist’. By 1905 he was drawing on blackened glass with a needle. However being able to transfer his skills onto canvas using colour would remain elusive for him for a decade. That is until he met Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), August Macke (1887 – 1914) and other avant-garde figures, who would enrich his life’s journey and experience.

When he did learn to manipulate colour and light he worked in many different media, oil paint, watercolour, ink, pastel, etc using canvas, muslin, linen, cardboard, fabric, wallpaper and newsprint. At all times in his work line persisted, and frequently alluded to poetry and music, a career he also considered because his parents wanted it for him, one he eventually abandoned for his passion, drawing.

Klee taught with Kandinsky at the German Bahaus school of art, design and architecture, all areas in which a line of beauty are important. He drew every day in his notebooks, which have informed modern art since his death at Switzerland during World War II.

Like many of his colleagues Klee would have looked back to the period of the Renaissance in Italy (14 – 16th centuries) for inspiration, particularly drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, which remain some of the most marvellous of all the Old Master’s works, especially his perspectives on the natural world. Like the Pre-Raphealite Brotherhood in England there was a poetry of drawing for Klee, which was an essential aspect of everything he achieved as he went about capturing society, and holding it captive.  At the Art Gallery of NSW until the 4th September 2011 The Poetry of Drawing is an Exhibition of the designs, studies and watercolours of the British Pre-Raphealites. Making new works of art doesn’t happen in isolation; it’s a shared activity.  In history all major artistic movements came into being when young artists clubbed together to provide each other with moral and material support. In England in the latter years of the nineteenth century a bevvy of beautiful, radical boys banded together to form a Brotherhood that would challenge the creators of their time. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt had an impressive support network of lovely ladies, who posed for them. Then there was a network team of other likely lads. Such as self motivating socialist leader of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris and the critic everyone wanted as their master, mentor or to gain consent to breathe from, John Ruskin. He proved the power of one to affect change was possible.

This Exhibition highlights The Poetry of Drawing and how it altered the course of British Art and includes 140 works– drawings, sketches, watercolours, illustrations and designs for textiles and stained glass. To draw what one can see surely must be one of the most satisfying, pleasing and exciting of all the skills we can inherit. Being able to draw can provide an opportunity to draw people from all walks of life and many and diverse backgrounds together and get them involved in visual conversations about culture and community. You don’t have to be rich to be able to draw, its all about choosing your parents and inheriting the right creative genes.

Of all the quotes about the act of drawing the one I can really personally plug into is that of actor Gary Oldman who said ‘I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn’t hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away.’ Painter Henri Matisse said ‘drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence’ while Salvador Dali observed that ‘drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad’.

What: The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphealite designs, studies and watercolours
Where: Art Gallery NSW
When: On now until September 4, 2011
Costs – Yes: Refer to Website http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/poetry-drawing/

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Twentieth century English architectural historian, Sir John Summerson described eighteenth century English Palladianism, or the English neo classical style as ‘that balanced combination of the useful and the beautiful, or prosperity and good breeding’.

What it did, in its time, was to satisfy a need in England for a style that encompassed principles of order and harmony, a combination of elegance with a lightness of touch. The end result was a style that was aesthetically very pleasing

After World War II John Fowler extracted the very essence of eighteenth century interior design and style and then added the nineteenth century concepts of home, hearth and family. He created an all new ‘eclectic’ English Country Style, one that found favour the world over because of its quality finishes, comfortable connotations, a touch of glamour combining with understated Georgian grace. It was a stress free relaxed type of style in that a book you had been reading left open, alongside newspapers you were going through in a pile, appeared integral to the design.

Fowler’s designs were considered ‘modern’ in his time based as they were on his, and his clients, nostalgia for a way of life that had all but vanished under a bombardment of bombs in London. He was further inspired when he met society hostess Nancy Lancaster, whose nostalgia for a ‘genteel’ way of life in the deep south of America from where she had fled following the tragic early death of her first husband, would also influence his developing style.

Fowler was undoubtedly inspired by the enlightened approach of a clergyman, Canon Valpy, whose bright and breezy rooms at his house at 3, The Close, Winchester had been a revolution in the wheel of taste during the latter years of the nineteenth century. The views of his house now in the V & A Museum at London, were commissioned around 1900 from painter Beatrice Olive Corfe, about whom little is known. Canon Valpy was a member of the Chapter of Winchester Cathedral, and a man of considerable private means like Archdeacon Grantley in Anthony Trollope’s novel The Warden.

Clearly the Valpy’s were collectors, especially of pictures in a modest way. We can see the Canon hung ‘improving’ prints, after the great religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance. The prints had been issued in reasonable quantities by the Arundel Society, which had been founded in 1849 under the influence of art critic John Ruskin and Queen Victoria’s consort Prince Albert, to promote an improved taste in pictures among the public. These pioneering color reproductions formed a crucial element in the decoration of many enlightened middle class homes and their popularity persisted well into the new century.

Canon Valpy was undoubtedly a modern chap, as in the centre of his arrangement over the fireplace mantel was also a copy of a now famous portrait of Arts and Crafts design leader William Morris’s wife Jane Morris, rendered in 1869 by painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphealite Brotherhood.

Life in the provincial backwater of Winchester was very pleasant indeed around 1901 when King Edward VII came to the throne. The Canon’s drawing room might be described as having ‘inconspicuous luxury’. It’s certainly very pleasant and homely, although elegant too in that very understated English way. The eclectic nature of the room, with its mix of modern chintz covered comfortable chairs, refined eighteenth century simple furniture, an uncluttered arrangement of well chosen books, objects and pictures is remarkably similar to the more consciously avante garde room arrangements of the London artists and intellectuals of his time.

The Canon’s taste for refined eighteenth century style furniture coincided with a revival of all things ‘Georgian’ at the beginning of the twentieth century in a style we now call Edwardian. This was when a desire grew up for a style that was considered to be a reaction to foreign influences, and the stifling nature of pretentious Victorian parlours that were loaded with overstuffed buttoned chairs, sofas and palm trees.

Eighteenth century taste and nineteenth century comfort were happily combined by the Canon and his wife. The lovely furniture designed by eighteenth century designer Thomas Sheraton and cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, mingled happily with more ponderous Victorian style armchairs and easy chairs covered in matching chintz cotton fabrics that were surrounded by skillfully grouped watercolors, hung at eye level to harmonize with the Georgian proportions of the room. The dining room is also decorated with antiques, a new idea at the time one still popular today, and seen throughout the world wherever English people have visited or settled.

The classical style had been reborn in Europe during the Italian Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) when Venetian Architect Andrea Palladio (1508-80) designed a series of villas for private clients in the Veneto, Italy.

His designs published in his I Quattro Libre, were based on his understanding and interpretation of the measurements and writings of Roman 1st century architect, Marcus Pollio Vitruvius, whose treatise on architecture had been found in 1430 perfectly preserved in a monastery library. It is the only such work to have survived from antiquity.

In Italy the towns Herculaneum and Pompeii were excavated from 1738 and 1748 respectively and the archaeological findings co-related to theories and practical building recipes and solutions, detailed in Vitruvius’s treatise and so they gained credibility.

English aristocrats refined elegance during the Georgian era, which encompassed the reign of the first four Kings named George from 1714 to 1830. This was when polite society was striving for aesthetic perfection especially in their houses, which were set in almost perfect landscapes. They were urged on by an awareness of, and appreciation for the ‘antique’, striving to emulate the ideal – classical perfection.

English Palladianism (or the neoclassical style) of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England became highly influential in America through the support of American President Thomas Jefferson, at least until the advent of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the arrival of Modernism (late 19th century).

The 3rd Earl of Burlington, Richard Boyle, set the tone first by building a classic Villa at Chiswick on the outskirts (then) of London, purely to entertain his friends. He, his designer William Kent, as well as Scottish Architect Colen Campbell had a profound effect on the future of domestic house design in England. Campbell published his work Vitruvius Britannicus in three volumes from 1715 to 1725 containing his own designs, plus others engraved by Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni, who also practiced architecture in England.

Giacomo Leoni completed the work at Lyme Park in Cheshire during the 1720′s. It is very like Pemberley, detailed in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice as viewed by an admiring Elizabeth Bennett.

It is the sort of  house the man who gained her affections, Mr Darcy, would have owned, with its central portico, flanking wings, rusticated basement area, piano nobile or noble first floor and a view, or prospect out over the gardens and surrounding countryside.

Elizabeth saw, ‘with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy or uselessly fine with less of splendor, and more real elegance…’

…’It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground… the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley…the rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor

English Country House interiors until this time had not been entirely satisfactory because there was no historical precedent, except for Roman Temples.

These certainly did not suit an English gentleman’s domestic arrangements at all and at Holkham Hall in Norfolk Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, ended up with a marble entrance hall designed by William Kent, looking for all the world like a giant Roman Bath.

This dilemma continued until after 1759, when Scottish Architect Robert Adam (1728 – 1792) arrived to set up practice at London. Having travelled extensively on the continent, surveying classical architecture and ruins first hand, Adam who also had extensive practical experience previously in his father’s architectural practice in Edinburgh, was in a position to answer demands for a more imaginative use of contrasting room plans and to enlarge the repertoire of decorative motifs that could be used.

Robert Adam’s work has been described as having an air of unceremonius good manners and unostentatious opulence, perfectly reflecting the civilized world of his patrons. The proportions, which governed his interiors, is a formulae whereby all the elements of the room were directly related to each other and to the scale of the human figure.

This meant they were not only pleasing to the senses, but also to the eye and it is why Georgian residences achieved such a following. The neo-classical motifs he used included: the urn, the vase, wreaths, the drop, swags, garlands of flowers, acanthus leaves, anthemiom, paterae and medallions, were all enthusiastically taken up and copied. He created a graceful neoclassical interior that satisfied many needs, providing the foundation for an elegant English country house style.

At Pemberley Mr Darcy, being a man of his time would have preserved and honoured the traditions of the past, while adding the comfort and convenience he required of his own interior.

Filled with beautifully designed quality made furniture, impressive tapestries and all manner of objet d’art.

This idea and style was taken up by many eighteenth century architects, as well as being skilfully re-interpreted by those who came after, including John Nash (1752-1835) architect to George IV and Sir John Soane (1753-1857), who interestingly purchased, after he died, all Robert Adam’s drawings.

At his own house in Lincoln Inn Fields at London Sir John Soane pared down the elements of the Neo-classical Style even more, into the simplicity of line that inspired late nineteenth century ‘modernists’ and, contemporarily still inspires classical ‘minimalists’. While the English Country Style became popular through the influence of John Fowler and Nancy Lancaster, today there are many medium sized provincial houses in England with Drawing and Dining Rooms that still look remarkably like Canon Valpy’s, despite the world of interiors changing many times since around them.

Carolyn McDowall, June 2011 ©The Culture Concept Circle

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2. French Country Style – Provence is c’est magnifique!
3. Adam in Georgian London, investing in the future of style