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Great Estates: Homewood Museum in Baltimore, Maryland
September 10, 2009 | Homewood Museum, a National Historic Landmark on the campus of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, is one of the country's finest Federal period houses. Based on a Palladian five part plan, it was built beginning in the summer of 1800, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the wealthiest men in America, purchased a 130-acre tract of land as a wedding present for his son Charles Carroll Jr. and his new daughter-in-law Harriet Chew Carroll. Without a known architect ascribed to the design, it is believed that Charles Jr. acted as gentleman-architect of the estate with builders Robert and William Edwards. The couple moved into the country estate a year later, though construction and improvements continued until around 1806, by which time they had decided to live there year-round. From the beginning, plans for Homewood were strained—building costs totaled over $40,000 (four times what Carroll had intended)—and just as Charles Jr. was unable to rein in his expenditures, he was unable to restrain his predilection for alcohol, and in 1816 Charles Sr. arranged for Harriet and the five children to move into a house in Philadelphia. Charles Jr. continued to live at Homewood intermittently until his death in 1825.
Homewood was inherited by Charles Carroll III, Charles Jr.'s only surviving son, who lived there until 1832. In 1839 it was sold to Samuel Wyman, who in 1897 leased it to the Gilman Country School for Boys. In 1902 Wyman's son William and cousin Samuel Keyser presented the estate to John Hopkins University, which used the house for a variety of campus functions including faculty offices. In 1973 funds were secured through the generosity of university trustee Robert G. Merrick to endow the building as a museum, and in the 1980s an extensive restoration project was undertaken by the architectural firm Mendel, Mesick, Cohen, White, Hall and the Homewood Restoration Advisory Committee, which transformed Homewood back to its original grandeur.
The main block of the house, which contains three principal entertaining rooms (Reception Hall, Dining Room, and Drawing Room), is unusual in being only a single story high, but it is flanked on either side by a hyphen and wing, one for the kitchen and service functions and the other for private family use. Although only one piece of furniture is original to the house—a black-painted and gilded armchair in the back parlor—extensive research went into choosing correct furnishings and decorative objects for each room. There is, for instance, 18th-century English silver by Paul Storr and Paul De Lamerie, painted fancy chairs from a Baltimore estate, a portrait of George Washington attributed to Gilbert Stuart, and a replica Brussels carpet that all match original descriptions provided in surviving family papers and an 1825 inventory. Where available furnishings with a Carroll family provenance have been included. The vivid color palette of Homewood's painted interiors, such as the bright green pigment of the Reception Hall, was also reinstated. The decorative details of the house are truly dazzling: the bold tumbling-block pattern painted floorcloth in the Dressing Room; the yellow faux Sienna marble-painted baseboard in the Dining Room; and the vaulted ceiling accented with an acanthus and bellflower plaster medallion in the Green Chamber (master bedroom).
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Current & Coming |
Greene and Greene at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 3, 2009 | While we wait for the fall exhibition season to begin, now is a good time to catch the traveling exhibition A "New and Native" Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene, which is in its final weeks at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (through October 18). Organized by the Gamble House and the Huntington Library to mark the centennial of Charles and Henry Greene's most acclaimed period (roughly 1907 to 1910), A "New and Native" Beauty tells the story of twenty-five of the architectural firm's commissions including their "ultimate bungalow houses." Featuring approximately 120 objects from furniture, metalwork, and stained glass to architectural drawings and archival photographs the exhibition brings to life the unified environments the firm created. At the MFA, visitors will also be able to see a special section devoted to the brothers' study of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the influence of the museum's own collections of Japanese art and arts and crafts design on their work.
One striking example in the exhibition is a library table made for the living room of the Charles Millard Pratt house in Ojai, California. Pratt, a member of the Standard Oil Company, and a native of Brooklyn, commissioned Greene and Greene to build the winter house for his family in 1908 and by 1911 had moved in. The furnishings for the living room, which also included a rocking chair, armchair, and drop front desk, were not designed until 1912. The octagonal table features a "fiddle-back" mahogany surface that was sectioned and arranged according to the Greenes' specifications. The opposing directions of the wood's grain became a major element in the decorative scheme of the room. Similarly, the intricate, silver-inlay wave motif on the table's drawer handle, which echoes the grain of the mahogany, was repeated in wavelike perforations in the lower stretchers and throughout the living room. For the commission, the Greenes collaborated with John and Peter Hall, a furniture maker and contractor respectively who were responsible for the superb craftsmanship that realized their designs.
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Ceramics by Royal Tichelaar Makkum
August 31, 2009 | A few weeks ago the New York Times featured the latest designs produced by Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the 400-year-old Dutch ceramics manufacturer. The new line called Fundamentals of Makkum is comprised of a basic pottery service designed by Lonny van Ryswyck and Nadine Sterk of Atelier NL that derives color variations from its use of clays from across the Netherlands' countryside. Also new this year is Dick van Hoff's block-like functionalist take on the traditional Dutch tile stove.
Today Makkum is directed by Jan Tichelaar the thirteenth generation to lead the family-owned business. Makkum's commitment to both contemporary and historical design is exceptional. Recent experiments have included several collaborations with noted ceramics artist Hella Jongerius who, in one instance, remixed the company's designs for majolica ware by cleverly applying the tin glaze—traditionally used on the front—askew to reveal transparent and white surfaces on both the front and back of a piece.
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Site Source: Danish-furniture.com
August 24, 2009 | Recent issues of The Magazine ANTIQUES have delved into the history and collecting of 20th-century design. The September 2008 article "The lost generation of Danish design" by Gregory Cerio is just one example. For readers interested in learning more about Denmark's design masters the website Danish-furniture.com offers a fine introduction. The non-commercial website was launched by Dansk Møbelkunst, a Copenhagen-based gallery that specializes in 20th-century Scandinavian design and that has its own e-commerce site. Danish-furniture.com features a number of well-known designers including Kaare Klint, Arne Jacobson, Børge Mogensen, Finn Juhl, Hans Wegner, Poul Kjærholm, and Verner Panton. It gives an account of their life and work and illustrates many of their top designs with beautifully photographed examples. The website currently includes three virtual exhibitions that explore plywood, folding furniture, and Jacobsen's commission for SAS's Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. Danish-f…» More
Current & Coming |
Jerry Bywaters at the Blanton Museum of Art
August 20, 2009 | Jerry Bywaters (1906-1989) was a seminal figure of 20th-century art in Texas. In addition to the prominent role he played as a faculty member for more than forty years at Southern Methodist University (SMU), and as director of the Dallas Museum of Art for over twenty years (1943-1964), throughout his career he was also an artist, curator, and critic. Considered a guiding force in Texas's regionalist art movement, Bywaters was one of the Dallas Nine—along with Alexandre Hogue, Otis M. Dozier, William L. Lester, and Everett Spruce—who promoted this style.
Born in Paris, Texas, Bywaters graduated from SMU with a degree in English and journalism in 1926, but soon after a trip abroad decided to pursue art as his career. He took courses at the Art Institute of Dallas, studied on his own in Mexico, and spent a summer at an artists' colony in Connecticut, before deciding to move to New York in 1928 to study at the Art Students League, where he worked with John Sloan. Upon returning to Dallas, Bywaters began to exhibit his work, to seek commissions for illustration and design, to teach, and to write about art for various regional magazines and newspapers.
Beginning in 1935 he took an active interest in printmaking, which he pursued until 1948. He was a founding member of Lone Star Printmakers (established in 1938), a local organization that promoted the medium and established a strong voice for printmaking in Texas until it disbanded around the time of World War II. During this period, Bywaters created thirty-nine prints that depicted the landscape, daily life, and people of Texas and elsewhere in the Southwest. These prints are the subject of an exhibition on view through November 8 at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, and organized by the Meadows Museum of SMU.
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Gemellion, Artist unknown, Limoges, France, 13th century Champlevé Enamel on Copper, 8 7/8” diameter Collection of The Walters’ Art
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