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Closing out the business day, the city’s workers would file out to swarm I-95, or head for the Amtrak station or DART stop, and report in again the next day. Wilmington was another city whose ebb and flow ran in twelve hour tides. Little by little, restaurants and bars have begun to reclaim the shoreline that is the downtown. And now, World Café Live has opened at the renovated Queen Theater on North Market Street, delivering world class music to these revitalized corridors.

One tip-off that Wilmington was destined to become a musical epicenter is the musicians who have lived below the radar here. Resident, David Bromberg performed resoundingly at the Light up the Queen Foundation benefit in 2010, while New Orleans native Trombone Shorty played outrageous saxophone on the roof of the nearby Shop Rite! The Peoples’ Festival held annually on the riverfront honors one time Wilmington resident Bob Marley. But nothing exactly prepares you for the full on architectural overhaul at the Queen Theater or the radiance of its performance stage. Once a repository for fetid rain water falling through its roof, and an aromatic blend of rubble, pigeon droppings and mold below, this thoughtful renovation has brilliantly revived the stylized ceiling medallions, three ten-by-ten foot frescoed murals, and ornately-gilded surrounds beside the organ pipes. The restoration process has also unearthed a fiercely burning, but dormant underground love from the Wilmington community.

Originally conceived in 1789 as the Indian Queen Hotel, and then operated as the luxurious Clayton House, the Queen Theater morphed into a movie palace in 1916. By April 1959, it shuttered its once-beloved doors, following a showing of House on Haunted Hill perhaps presciently, and remained dark for the next five decades. Enter Hal Real and his Real Entertainment Group, a dynamic consortium of music club developers who collaborated with WXPN radio station on its maiden enterprise, World Café Live, in Philadelphia. Seeing the possibilities with imperturbability required Wilmington based real estate developers Buccini/Pollin Group and city officials to join the initiative to restore the Queen Theater. With straight faces, a Spring 2011 opening date was announced in October of 2009 on the 45,000 square foot project.

The finished building comprises great paradox; predictably dramatic spaces – the proscenium stage – combined with textured balcony seating and open plan for approximately 900 persons. The acoustics, both structural and mechanically-enhanced, are precise, clear, yet luminous and effective in a variety of ranges. Witness the intense complexity of opening act, Sonny Landreth, on April 1, followed by the intimate and personal renditions of Ingrid Michaelson’s sold-out performance.

The Queen serves all.

Telescoping from the spectacular to the specific is also the hallmark of its interior configurations. Generous spaces create a sensory time sequence that satisfies both a taste for imposing public domains and an appreciation for surface detail. Many of the oldest paint layers have been conserved in their naturally eroding state and preserved into collage like patterns. The bars are eco-friendly strokes of genius. Reclaimed from other, funky locations, they highlight the knots of pine or diagonal herringbone one expects to find in a Pocono lodge, or a shack at the beach. This familiarity of time-worn material and the surprise casualness of natural wood in a beaux arts environment is a welcoming and warming touch. In this building of somewhat grand volume, one makes small discoveries; ancient movie projectors found with their film reels still in place, a whiplash of time and space.

One might desire a parallel alternative to the rich vibrancy of the stage: Upstairs Live now serves lunch, happy hour and dinner. Or, take a break to the smaller downstairs bar, pop into the palladium windowed Olympia Room – sometimes used for private parties – or the witty gift shop, and you will have changed the gestalt completely and primed yourself for the dance floor. The Queen’s relationship to the street outside is direct and harmonious, if what you crave is simply air. Another passerby may spontaneously stop in, provided the evening’s musical act has not already had its tickets swallowed up. Reservations are recommended.

Wilmington’s many banks now advertise in the sponsor pages of the Queen Theater’s program. They too understand the importance of continuity and re-invention. Projecting civic pride to the Light up the Queen Foundation – the ongoing non-profit that brings talent, illustriousness, and history to their home base – makes banks seem almost human again. A crowd gathers on the sidewalk outside the Queen’s doors at night. For Wilmington, whose motto is A Place to Be Somebody, those words may finally ring true.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer

World Café Life at:

The Queen Theater

500 North Market Street

Wilmington, DE 19801

Tel: 302 994 1400

www.queen.worldcafelive.com

www.lightupthequeen.org

A mid-20th century architectural rendering for urban renewal

“E xcept man, nobody lies. A rosebush cannot lie. It has to produce roses; it cannot produce marigolds — it cannot deceive. It is not possible for it to be otherwise than it is. Except man the whole existence lives in truth. Truth is the religion of the whole existence — except man. And the moment a man also decides to become part of existence, truth becomes his religion.”   -Indian Mystic, Osho

Architectural Forensics is a term to describe how it is that the ‘built environment’ perfectly expresses the intrinsic quality of any society’s sociological, economic, and political nature. In the search for truth, the parsing of concepts, deliberation of ideas, or the use rhetorical analysis to glean the essence of our reality pales in comparison to the truth at it is revealed by the world which we have wrought; and with this fact, there can be no mistake or equivocation. fine arts magazine

Boston City Hall (KM&K Arch.,1962-67). Blocks of Boston's West End neighborhoods were torn down to make way for sprawling plazas and Brutalist-style I.M. Pei-inspired architecture

Architects and urban designers are renowned for their ability to define concepts by employing formal constructs and then to argue the merits of their design as is expedient to gain favor for their proposal. The completed projects however are rarely given the proper scrutiny to gauge the product against the initial arguments upon which the physical expressions are based; and when they are, it is clear that the idea rarely matches reality. Western Civilization’s fundamental philosophical postulation to reason can readily facilitate the contamination of the truth by infusing ulterior motives into its meaning; whether or not consciously intended in order to advocate a pre-conceived objective; the resulting built-landscape purveyed as a litany of conjecture in which we continually bear the consequences of real structures and places.

Once clear about our intent, there can be no equivocation about our perception. If the discovery of truth is our objective, then it exists all around us; ready to reveal the unassailable reality that will guide our course of action and indicate the direction of our pursuit. For example, one may argue the merits of permitting a modern glass and steel tower to occupy an infill site within the context of early 20th century, pre-war masonry apartment buildings on Park Avenue in New York City. The architect or developer may cite the benefits of infusing a contemporary architectural expressions to an otherwise tired streetscape; the visual benefits of contrasting transparent forms to masonry facades; the wonderful addition of a brutally honest structure to the dated historical formalism so prevalent in the neighborhood; and even argue the merits of including modern and ‘relevant’ forms of expression within an historic context… all which sound like cogent arguments at the front end of the process when the project strives to gain approval. Yet the simple reality of such an experiment has indicated quite a different legacy; one that has only served to erode a wholesome identity often caused by economic initiatives that are conveyed by architectural seductions. We know this to be true not as a consequence of clarity derived from the initial conceptual debate, but we know this truth to be evident because we can walk the streets and see and feel the physical evidence of our actions as one misguided seduction leads to others until integrity of the place has been thoroughly compromised.

Rendering of Le Corbusier's 'Ville Radieuse', his concept of 'machines for living' (1923).

When the initial arguments were made for the ‘Urban Renewal’ of the lower east side in Manhattan as the dereliction of these neighborhoods was considered to be unsustainable, theory usurped observation and the consequences were swift and dramatic. A wave of gentrification prompted the previous generation of immigrants to move further uptown and to occupy larger homes and more spacious neighborhoods. As soon as the migration had gained momentum degradation was swift even though the urban fabric remained in-tact and might have been resurrected. Concepts abounded for what to do with the tenement structures that lined the lower east side of downtown Manhattan. The prevailing notion that won favor conveniently employed Le Corbusier’s concepts of urbanism as described in his diatribe Toward an Architecture (1923). The concept that large, densely-populated towers, these ‘machines for living’, would be set within rectangular park-like green spaces and permit its residents a gasp of nature if they so dared to venture onto that barren land seemed like quite a good idea. Unfortunately for idealism; reality presented a far different picture; stark in its contrast where crime followed the anonymity of these faceless towers, while the utter segregation of an impoverished socio-economic class of the population was clearly defined by these piles of masonry blight. Traditional neighborhoods where migrants flowed into this nation and then graduated to another existence gave way to these new, urbanly-renewed ghettoes that held its inhabitants largely captive to the now very familiar architectural stereotype that defines public housing. We know this to be true because we see and witness the effects of this reality. There can be no argument to the expression of the world that we’ve built as is indicated by the construction as it exists, and the effects that are consequential to our built environment.

A typical New England 18th c. era village center- church, commerce and homes facing the town green

The truth as revealed by architectural forensics. We are the detectives who observe, investigate, and reveal unassailable realities as expressed by the physical world. The aim: to provide clarity as to the purpose and understanding of the consequences for that which we’ve created. What does the ‘village green’ tell us about 18th Century New England colonial society? That the church dominates the essential position of power, authority, and honor is no accident. Other homes that surround the ‘green’ are generally of similar if not identical shape, size, materials, and coloring to each other and they surround a very regular and ordered pastoral setting around which the townsfolk gather, share, provide, and protect one another from the threats of savages and secularism. The yearning for freedom, for equality amongst one’s brethren; to conform, to live humbly and yet with determination; to control their environment and yet with a clear respect that society persists or perishes at the whim of what nature issues forth, as conveyed by God’s will… All of these attributes are qualities gleaned from observation with just a modicum of written history that serves to temper the inclination one might have to go too far astray. The truth about this society, as immortalized by the wood frames and clapboards of their construction—what remains in our time and that which has long since disappeared due to our delinquency, obstinacy, ignorance, and willful intent—are quite simply more evidence that provides clarity of the society as conveyed by its architecture.

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591)

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591), serene, powerful, perfectly symmetrical in plan, the rotunda and cupola elements that terminate the center of the Greek cross plan; the point of focus to the entire composition, the universe where man is at its center, controlling of his destiny as expressed by this creation… the art which adorns the walls, ceiling, each and every nook and crevasse of this palatial home; the saturation of form and attention to each surface whether it be adorned or left spare as an intended repose; the owner’s clarity of purpose, no hesitation, willful, wonton, desirous, thoroughly committed in its expression of erudition; that art is the consummate expression of beauty; that beauty is both the point of departure and realization to what mankind can aspire in this life, perhaps the only life; as if that remains the sole vestige of his paradise and salvation. To observe any subject building; allowing it to speak through its form is a certitude upon which we can rely, because it is unassailable. We are witness to these realities; and only that awareness can provide clarity and meaning.

If Charles Darwin spent months on the Beagle floating up the Hudson River instead of off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, having sequestered his observations in an investigation entitled Conclusions of our Civilization instead of The Origin of Species, would we be any less impressed with the veracity of what he’d witnessed and assessments drawn accordingly? Society is, in fact, the expression of the environment that it has inherited coupled with the built environment that it has created. Our society has become overly seduced with the “what-ifs”, and no longer cares to acknowledge the “has-beens”; and yet we live in a world that we’ve made; there can be no dispute about that.

I’ve often thought that it is a fool’s errand that architectural publications and journals evaluate built projects shortly after their completion. There is hardly a message to be conveyed about a newly minted project that couldn’t be have already been reviewed when it was merely a conception on either the drawing board or in the fancy of one’s mind. A building or urban landscape can only be truly evaluated after it has existed for some substantial period of time; after when it has been burnished by the elements; trodden upon; been used and abused; becomes part of a fabric or recognized as a carcinogen that has assaulted the world already extant.

My position is quite simply to observe that which we’ve created in order to know the truth. The built environment is the perfect mirror in that it tells us everything about ourselves and perfectly expresses who we are; with utter disregard for propaganda or innuendo.

Architectural forensics is the tool to gain this understanding. They are clear and ingenuous; forensics discover the reality that gives birth to form and makes eminently clear the choices that may not have been initially understood because they were not yet expressed physically and could have been subject to willful or even unintended deception. We as employers of this powerful tool need know nothing about architecture or urban planning in order to draw our conclusions. In fact, we will no longer be seduced by the critical experts of architectural proposals as we become more confident that words cannot be used as a substitution for the reality of what buildings tells us through their forms and physical presence. We now possess the tools to have a clear understanding to the meaning of that which was destroyed in order to make way for the existence of a new structure; or even how a street, city, or forest may have benefited or suffered as a consequence of the new physical landscape . Truth gained in this manner of observation and description is unassailable.

Thus is the power and potential of Architectural Forensics- a force for truth and meaning.

By William Green, Contributing Writer

William Green holds a fine arts degree from Tufts University.  He continued his studies with a year at the University of Copenhagen, Royal Academy of Architecture; proceeding to the University of Colorado in pursuit of his Master of Architecture degree. This was followed by an internship at the prestigious Studio Coppola in Milan, Italy. After several years of practice and a number of awards, the opportunity to design offices for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc., in New York City, provided the impetus to establish his own firm in 1986.

William has served on the faculty of the New York School of Interior Design and has lectured at various universities and numerous design symposiums.

His firm can be reached at: www.wgaarchitects.net

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J&S: The Juvet Landscape Hotel is located at Valldal, near the town of Åndalsnes in north-western Norway. Passing tourists are attracted by a spectacular waterfall, in a deep gorge near the road in Gudbrandsjuvet. The client, Knut Slinning, is a local resident. The idea emerged as an opportunity to exploit breathtaking scenery with minimal intervention, allowing locations which would otherwise be prohibited for reasons of conservation. fine arts magazine

ARTES: How did the client, Knut Slinning, and your firm come to work together?

J&S: The client, Knut Slinning, comes from the coastal town Ålesund, about 100 km west of Gudbrandsjuvet. He is a property developer. He has owned a cottage in Gudbrandsjuvet since late 1980′s. He listened to our first presentation of ideas for the site (part of a national tourist road project Gudbrandsjuvet viewing platform, http://www.jsa.no/galleries_index_2.html) where we, amongst other things, proposed a ‘landscape hotel’. This idea originally came from another project we did, in the Aurland valley further south, in the Sognefjord, but it is still not realized there. About two years after our presentation in Gudbrandsjuvet, Knut Slinning bought a farm with a river, close to the waterfalls in Gudbrandsjuvet, and he asked us to help him realize the landscape hotel idea. We did the zoning plan (he is allowed to build 28 rooms on his property) and have now realized the first seven rooms. A small spa will be completed this summer as well, very close to the river, with one wall just in glass in each of the saunas, relax rooms and massage rooms.

ARTES: Of course, the green theme is on everyone’s mind right now, but what inspired you for this particular design?

J&S: We wanted to create rooms that does not have the conventional borders (the walls), but which offer an experience that is as large as the landscape—a mountainous gorge three-to-four miles wide in this case. To create this, we worked a lot with the windows so that as much as possible of the “bordering” or “enclosing” effect that a window and its framing usually gives were eliminated, or made as small as possible. This is intended to give an effect of being in a large and grand landscape (not merely looking at it), but maintaining absolutely private, while also being protected and warm.

Instead of the conventional hotel, with guest rooms stacked together in one large building, the Landscape Hotel distributes the rooms throughout the terrain as small individual houses. Every house has one or two walls that are entirely built in glass, making the experience of being in the space truly breathtaking. Through careful orientation, every room gets its own exclusive view of a beautiful and unique piece of the landscape, always changing with the season, the weather, and the time of day. No room looks out at another, so the rooms offer the ultimate in privacy, even though curtains are not used.

At the moment there are seven units completed, but with the possibility of adding 21 additional, according to the master plan. All the rooms have slightly differing designs, as a result of local topographical needs and vegetation, as well as to maximize the requirements for privacy and the best possible views. Construction was carefully planned to eliminate the necessity of blasting of rock or altering the terrain in any way. In this way, the rooms become the least invasive addition to the existing topography.

ARTES: Each room seems to have its own character. Why are the rooms laid out differently?

J&S: We did not want to use dynamite, we wanted a project that could be removed without leaving scars in the landscape, and therefore we regarded the houses as guests on the site. Basically we discussed a lot what each single room should contain. All the rooms are slightly different because of the typography and conditions on each plot, but with same basic services.

ARTES: The construction and interior design considerations must have been a challenge, given the rough terrain and harsh winter conditions. How did you solve those problems?

J&S: The units are over-engineered for harsh winter conditions, built with massive spruce construction (85mm in the walls, 120mm in the roof and the floor), as a finished reveal on the interior (roof and walls). On the outside there is pine panel, treated with iron vitriol, which creates a chemical process on the surface of the wood that resembles ageing; the wood turns grey in a couple of months because of a reaction with the daylight.

The modular units are intended for summer occupancy only. Each building rests on a set of 40mm massive steel rods drilled into the rock, with existing topography and vegetation left largely untouched. The glass walls are set against slim frames of wood, locked with standard steel profiles, using stepped edges to extend the exterior layer of the main glass surfaces all the way to the corners.

The interiors are treated with transparent oil with black pigments, so that reflections from the inner surface of the glass wall are minimized. Shelves, benches and a small table are all built by the same massive wooden elements to maintain a certain degree of deliberate monotony, serving as a visual counterpoint to the complex nature views outside and to keep the visual presence of the interior at a minimum.

ARTES: Tel me a bit more about J&S’s commitment to green design and how you optimized those guidelines in this project?

J&S: Today’s concern for sustainability in architecture focuses almost exclusively on reduced energy consumption in production and operation. At Jensen and Slodvin, we think that conservation of topography is another aspect of sustainability deserving of attention. Standard building procedure requires the general destruction of the site to accommodate foundations and infrastructure before building can commence. Conserving the site is a way to respect the fact that nature precedes and succeeds man. Also, dutiful observation of existing topography produces a visual ‘reading’, where the geometry of the intervention highlights the irregularities of the natural site, thus explaining both itself and its context in a more powerful way. In this way, a sustainable connection is established between structure and site.

The hotel had a planned opening for summer, 2009. A small spa is being built very close to the river, with two saunas and a massage room. It is inserted into the ground, but with glass walls facing the view of the river and the mountains.

ARTES: Thank you for your time. The photographs themselves were breath-taking. I hope I can get to see the finished project someday soon.

Client: Knut Slinning; Project Architects JSA: Jan Olav Jensen (pl), Børre Skodvin, Torunn Golberg, Helge Lunder, Torstein Koch, Thomas Knigge; Landscape Architect: Jensen & Skodvin; Static Consultant: Siv. Ing. Finn Erik Nilsen; Year Planned: 2004 – 2009; Year Built: 2007 – 2009; Status: Under realization;  Area: 800m2; Cost: 2 Million Euro

All photographs courtesy of Jensen & Skodvin Architects. For more information, see: The Juvet Landscape Hotel website at: www.juvet.com

or contact Jensen & Skodvin at: www.jsa.no

(Jensen & Skodvin Arkitektkontor AS, Sinsenveien 4D, 0572 Oslo, Norway)

Shilpa Chavan, Headgear, mixed media (2010)

Is art a part of life, or does it, in certain ways, stand apart from other forms of expression? Though sometimes challenging to categorize, broadly and philosophically- speaking, artistic expression deals with constantly evolving notions of aesthetics and rasa (taste), that is, varied ways of seeing and perceiving life and the surrounding world, but always with creativity as the central axis. More specifically, the distinction between art and craft, or between fine art and design/ fashion/applied art is equally disputed. All creative endeavors, in any form of visual art or the performing art or literature, epitomize a given time and space. Artists of all genres and designs- painters, sculptors, designers, illustrators, craftsmen, architects, fashion designers and new media practitioners, individuals or groups, in a juxtaposition of art and artifacts represent the vision, vitality and plurality of the cultural matrix in which they exist. Resulting from a cross fertilization of ideas and experiences, immersed in aesthetics as well as some form of functional value- may be just visual or sensual stimulation, each art form with its distinct characteristics, in whatever genre, color, style or media; involves cerebral and emotional inputs as well as skills, materials and a play of creative energies as a complete human activity.fine arts magazine  

The Indian Context  

Nayika Shringar: depicting one of nine moods or feelings, illustrating how fashion is integral to Indian artistic practice.

Intrinsically rooted in classical, tribal and folk forms that have traversed everything from the sacred to the profane, the decorative to the functional; Indian art in all its kaleidoscopic variety continues to engage life and society. Drawing on sound philosophical principals of Shilpasatras (the study of arts and crafts), expressed in both sacred and courtly terms, it has retained its aesthetic appeal while maintaining its functional role. Artists continue to perform important roles as communicators and harbingers of change, providing both guidance for those who pursue the arts purely for enjoyment, while also rendering works that illustrate popular ballads, epics and love stories and producing functional objects, including garments and other adornments. Arts add colour to Indian life, serve as a document of our history and enhance the cultural environment.  

Shringar (preparation for the day) to evoke one of the navrasa (nine juices with corresponding moods or feelings) is depicted with finesse in ornately-adorned sculptures and temple deities, or beautifully painted manuscripts and miniatures. They reinforce a tradition and illustrate how fashion has been integral to Indian artistic practice. Historical accounts and literary texts of the past describe in captivating detail the rustle of pure silks as the rich pass by. Renowned for their colors and patterns, Indian textiles, in fine muslin and handloom fabrics, received royal patronage, while also being accessible to commoners, who wear them in elegantly-folded, often unstitched, fashions such as saree for women and dhoti or pagri for men. Elaborately embroidered and embellished costumes, intricately designed jewelry and decorative patterns on hands, face and body, have been an integral part of Indian culture, cutting across all socio-economic strata, regardless of region, age, sex or community. Each distinctive style serves a specific occasion.  

Re-fashioning Art  

Menhdi: application of henna dye for weddings, festive occasions. Here depicting sexual positions from kamasutra

In this constantly-evolving world, nothing remains the same. India is not exempt and, given its prominent role in the global marketplace, its art and culture have also undergone an unprecedented transformation. The resulting free-flow of materials, styles and techniques has generated a refreshingly-hybrid style of art. Clearly impacted by all-pervasive Bollywood films, pop culture, kitsch and an explosion of material available through the Internet, Indian art in all its forms, from fine art to performance and installation art to design, fashion, architecture, photography, video and new media seem to have been refashioned as a new Avatar. Going well beyond decorative and spiritual themes, wider issues of human interest such as sexuality, feminist themes, regional identity, corruption, violence, world events, environment and human rights issues are being addressed and re-shaped in forms that can be either beautiful or beastly. In terms of scale and ambition too, Indian artists exude a new vigour and confidence. There is daring, depth and glamour in contemporary Indian art, offering provocation, reflection and pleasure. In an inclusive approach, the old and the new co-exist as canonical texts. Vastu shastras (architecture), Silpashastras (arts and crafts) and Kamasutra (art of sexual pleasure) are studied and practiced with as much fervor as ever, while innovation and experimentation, brought about by digital technology and new media, continue to open new doors for ancient practices.  

Alankar or embellishment for the self and one’s surroundings is a natural human desire. It is an essential element of visual language and an inseparable component of aesthetics. By analyzing costumes, decorative tradition, motifs and iconography used by a particular group at any given time, art historians can reconstruct a stylistic progression that traces the changes in a cultural milieu. Though often criticized merely for its glamour value, the evolution of fashion, in fact, is a creative endeavor akin to the study of fine art. Fashion artists work with colour, material, texture, form and design while painters, sculptors and other visual artists work with similar materials and concepts, often in an abstract realm. In a significant judgment, the Bombay High Court recently ruled that fashion designers are, in fact, artists. Fashion artists add beauty and visual appeal of garments, enhancing the utility, look and value of what they create–a decorative piece of clothing or a functional object. In turn, visual artists create to articulate their own and others’ dreams, fears, ideas and to catalogue events, with the similar result that our cultural environment is further enhanced. All artists take forward the age old concept of working together in groups and across disciplines, learning from each other in the process, as did the sthapatis or architects who excelled in building design, or the master artist who worked in karkhanas (studios/workshops) with the rangamez or colourist, calligrapher, framer and binder.  

Convergence  

Dileep Sharma, My Pavilion, fiberglass, steel (2010)

Both creative domains, though inextricably intertwined in their search for aesthetics and visual language, involve certain characteristics peculiar to each. While fashion artists appear to play vigorously with materials and premeditated design and for functionality as required by the rasik or market, artists seem to focus primarily on inner urges and spontaneity to reach the viewer or collector, often relegating the practicality of art to the background. Creativity and their ability to handle material and transform ideas into shapes, seem to be equally significant for artists and couturiers.  

A recent exhibition in Delhi provided a platform with space and scope for artists and designers to cross over the fence and converge experimenting and re-working their creativity with functionality as the goal. Each of the ten visual artists created a fashion garment or object of physical adornment, in addition to creating a work from within their own realm. The fashion artists play with unrestrained creativity making a two or three dimensional or virtual art work and designing a garment in their signature styles. In the process, both groups celebrate the exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas, experiences and practices, free from the pressure of commissions and the market, reliving their early, dreamy days of training and learning.  

Exhibitors include a mix—renowned artists and some younger and cutting-edge—but all straddling the genres to create paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos and interactive art; fashion garments, functional objects and even food complete this inclusive, cohesive forum. This convergence of art and fashion makes a feast for the eyes, mind and body, challenging the intellect and charming with aesthetics.  

Dileep Sharma's woodblock designs printed on saree (detail)

Amid the ten visual artists in the exhibition is a large fiberglass brightly coloured sculpture of foot tapping legs of a young girl, My Pavilion, by Dileep Sharma. A symbol of modernity and pop culture, she is seductively poised as her mini-skirt flares in the air, bringing the exuberant pink of the inside out, showing off her yellow panty with precisely painted imagery in place, playing with its own shadow on the shiny plate below. A resident of Bollywood city, Sharma, known by his pseudonym, Kunwar ji, then returns to his roots in Rajasthan to work with craftsmen and get his intricate colourful imagery of provocatively playful female legs, in variable posturing, engraved in woodblocks for the hand block printing of his fashion art piece, the evergreen saree, in georgette.  

Baba Anand, Life Boxes (1 of 22), mixed media installation (2004)

In a similar pop and Bollywood streak appears the art of Baba Anand. Shuttling between the East and West, his artwork as an installation of 22 framed boxes that he has worked on since 2004, painted in a glossy laboratory-white. There is a clear imprint of his bohemian, open mindscape and his global exposure in the imagery and form of his work. The ‘Life Boxes’—painted mixed media imagery glued to the wood-threads, grub, wheels, money, luxury brands, advertisements, slogans, wax dolls, photos, etc.—create a collage illustrating the “culture of consumption and consumption of culture…” a clinical examination of westernized society, “an artistic anthropology of the habits of the Global Village at the dawn of the 21st Century”, to quote Jerome Neutre. This trained fashion designer, whose current practice engages fine art works in a kitsch- influenced, heavily embellished oeuvre, comes to the fore in his rock- star- gold jacket specially designed and created for the exhibition as his functional, wearable entry.  

Satish Gupta,Shwedagon, silk, pashmina, turquoise beads (fabric by India India), 2010

In contrast is Satish Gupta’s, ‘Shwe De Gong’ meditative creations in the Zen spirit, inspired by his recent visit to Myanmar. The icon featured in the painted canvas is also the central figure in his fabric creation for adorning the body. The shawl, in silk and wool fabric specially created by skilled crafters at ‘INDIA INDIA’, brings the artist’s vision to life in his maroon and black, handmade appliqué-worked piece with Buddha images superimposed, complimenting the painting. Together, the two follow the grid of the Cosmic Matrix series that has engaged and inspired the artist’s creative energies for years. As for the symbiotic relationship between art and fashion, the artist believes, “… creativity cannot be restricted to any one medium. What is expressed is of value through whichever medium the artist chooses for a particular work”.  

Seema Kohli (squatting on floor, middle) looking at embroiderer working on her design for ornate embroidered jacket

Engagement with iconography appears differently in artist Seema Kohli’s painting as a fine blend of myth and feminist energy with poetic elegance. Her densely painted canvas filled with nature, semi- anthropomorphic forms and a sensuous feminine figure prominently placed centrally, recreate mythology associated with the concept of procreation in ‘Hiranya garbha’ and the ‘Golden Womb’. To reflect on a woman’s search and urge for beauty, she presents a complete outfit in her fashion creation influenced by fashion designer Poonam Bajaj. A hand –embroidered, richly embellished jacket, digitally printed silk Lycra body suit, suede embroidered clutch bag coordinate to illustrate a feminist streak in her art.  

In a vastly different mode appear abstract renditions of Paris based artist Sujata Bajaj, whose work remains firmly rooted in the soil of her birth-land, but exudes a touch of the West—where she is based now—in its marked finesse. Her richly coloured canvas completely covered with evocative abstract impressionist markings of panchtatva—the five natural elements—accompanied by calligraphic, textual and textural interventions, looks bright and alive, drawing in the viewer. She complements it with a leather clutch by an Italian designer who has included a small canvas strip, hand painted by Sujata, on its cover. Easily carried and used, the handbag is an interesting companion to the painting on the wall.  

Sujata Bajaj stands beside a recent work (2007). From, The Hindu On-Line News

Manu Parekh known for his still life and Banaras series of paintings turns to Lord Ganesha for this exhibition. The painted canvas featuring that god in red yellow and green has orange and pink smeared all over his benevolent face, broad forehead, long winding laddoo holding trunk, pot belly and multiple hands. The bright eyed, generous God presents a picture perfect lovable image with an interesting touch of the artist’s unmistakable signature style. His rendition of the lord in a smaller work on cardboard is beautifully turned into a locket, given his experience as design consultant for the Weavers’ Service Center and then the Handicraft and Handloom Export Corporation of India. The locket strung together as a necklace makes a wearable piece possibly for special occasions, may be for invoking the Lord for good luck!  

Manu Parekh, hand-painted pendant (2010)

Landscape is at the centre of all that Paramjit Singh creates. His gentle exploration in subtle colours with laboriously textured thick brush work on canvas re-calls quiet pictures of silent valleys, flowing streams and water bodies, rising sun or moonlit nights, hills and mountain- scapes, walkways between towering trees, thick forests or streetscapes in autumn, covered with falling leaves. The artist’s painting for the exhibition explores a similar, other-worldly dreamscape, in a haven of its own, far beyond the chaotic urban world. Singh then selects a section of his painting, transposing it into digital imagery, printing it on fabric as a stole, usable by any individual with taste of any age and of either sex. The artist’s ability to work across media and domains is well-exemplified by both of his creations in the exhibition.  

Ravi Kumar Kashi specializes in making his own paper; working with various materials and genres, he has created a series of human torsos of cotton, jute and paper. A reflection of the times we live in, the visual culture of media re-presentations and hype are recurrently featured in his ‘non-linear’ artistic career that encompasses collage, moulded paper sculptures, assemblages, paintings, photography and new media work. The torso or armory of Doubting Thomas’is linked to his fashion art- wearable T shirts, aptly titled Inside Out. There is an uncanny resemblance between the two. The T shirts’ images of inner body parts painted in water-proof ink, and the torso, reveal how we hide by wearing clothes or otherwise covering up. Kashi’s work is also a comment on the human body’s fragility and the concept of regeneration.  

Paramjit Singh, abstract imagery digitally printed on a chiffon stole.

 As an artist, Yusuf Arakkal works across media and disciplines, appreciating the bond and interdependence between art and design: “We all know before fashion designing became specialized it was artists who created fashion and designed costumes. For example, Michelangelo had designed the beautiful out fits for the Swiss guards at Vatican that are still worn by them”.  

Ravi Kumar Kashi, Doubting Thomas, torso installation (2), paper pulp, mixed media (2008/9)

 Fashion artists and designers, just as many visual artists, work to bring high aesthetics to their creations. Yusuf has painted two canvases with familiar wearable garments: a jacket and trousers. The red hanger and line running through each canvas lend an animating, painterly touch to both images. A light blue shirt in soft denim, paired with a piece from his Child series of paintings, creates a wearable fashion garment with unisex appeal.  

The role that models play in giving the designed fashion wear its full glory is often limited to their appearance in ramp walks and glossy magazines or the advertising world. Young Viveek Sharma features a European model that he met during a recent residency in Germany in his oil on canvas on display in the show. He then cooks a meal and prepares the table showing the model waiting at the window and titling the whole installation ‘Who is coming for dinner tonight?’ This in-your-face interactive art work brings the fashion design and art domains together via a performative mode, a telling comment on the uncertainty in a model’s life. It also reflects the frailty of human relationships in contemporary society. Sharma adds another dimension to his work given, that the Zanana Table Chair, part of the installation, was created by designer duo, Sahil and Sarthak, who used local material and ethnic wear for this ultra-modern luxury furniture.  

Yusuf Arakkal, Generation Gap,o/c (2001)

Rajesh Pratap Singh, Meditating Man, scissors, 48"x48"x13".

 The ten fashion artists likewise play with their creative energies to embody art, beside design and fashion, within its folds. While Ritu Kumar chooses to create a painting in mixed media to feature her love of the fabric and colours, along with an elaborately textured ornate costume, JJ Valaya finds recourse in photography to document his long time association with that form, in addition to his signature fashion creation. In a mix of everyday materials and street culture, Manish Arora, inspired by Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, creates his own flamboyant, contemporary design; while his name-sake from Mumbai, Manish Malhotra, known for his designs for many of the Bollywood film stars, also showcases a couple of his ornate creations. Gaurav Gupta juxtaposes his garment with an installation to explore “the blurred line between the accepted norm of functional and non functional”. Himanshu Dogra and Play Clan give us “an experiential walkthrough showing different processes and development of an art work from concept to print….as a garment, a painting or a utility item….” Malini Ramani’s garment and installation with video, flesh out the ambience that connects the two within their context. Rajesh Pratap Singh’s sculpture of a meditating man made out of scissors, and his men’s wear suit worn by one of his associates, both illustrate his love for simplicity with substance. Shilpa Chavan, or Little Shilpa, as she is more popularly known, styles a hat and an installation made with humble materials found in a local street market, transforming it into a spectacular sculpture with a feminist thrust (see opening image). In his fashion designs, Varun Sardana uses masks theatrically, turning fashion into a performance: “…the theatre of fashion….a play between wearable garments and their heightened presentation”.  

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Viveek Sharma, KALIYUG, o/c (2009). Fabiant Claude Walter Gallery, Zurich

 This versatile collection features many new art works across the genres, all aesthetically endowed and technically virtuous. They respond to the concept behind the exhibition, with a fresh outlook, as fashion creations and fine art works coalesce in a free exchange of creative energies. Both domains, influencing each other in frequently varying proportions, now inhabit today’s art galleries and museum spaces. Historically too, both forms have remained current with society, part and parcel of its time. Original patterns, whether painted on canvas or drawn on paper, may be equally creative. Artists patronize fashion designers, as fashion designers have traditionally collected art, as was the case with French couturier Paul Poiret, who collected works by Picasso, Matisse, Dufy and Rouault, among others. Artists likewise design costumes and sets for theater, as did Neelima Sheikh for one of Anuradha Kapoor’s stage productions. MF Husain and Laxma Goud have both designed clothes, and artist Sanjay Bhattacharya began his career as a designer, and Shuvaprasanna, as an illustrator. Creative influence has flowed both ways as fashion imitates art, and art imitates life.  

And life continues to be impacted by both!  

By Sushma Bahl, Contributing Writer  

This article is an edited version of the curatorial essay that was featured in the catalogue for ‘Convergence: Art & Fashion’ exhibition, presented by Art Positive in Delhi in Nov-Dec 2010)

Fred Johnson, Bearded Lady (c. 1930). Collection Howard and Robin Marks

Twenty-one paintings were featured in Sideshow, an exhibition that highlighted a traditional piece of Americana – circus sideshow banners. The exhibit, co-curated by Dr. Amy Vigilante for the University of Florida’s University Gallery, included the work of legendary banner painters Fred Johnson, Snap Wyatt, Jack Cripe, Jack Sigler and Johnny Meah. 

Sideshow banners and their creators have long been excluded from discussions of art; a primary dilemma has been the inability to fit them neatly into any category of art making. Though they are, in fact, oil paintings on canvas, banners were not created to be and are not embraced as fine art, and are most often described as American self-taught or folk art. fine arts magazine 

Jack Sigler, Rubber Boy (c.1950s). Collection Howard and Robin Marks

 Their intended purpose does not give the banners any additional leverage in the art world; they were initially created for spectacle – to aggrandize the abnormality of circus sideshow performers or “freaks.” Banners were hung in long lines down the bally way leading to the entrance of the big top. “Callers” stood in front of each banner, encouraging passers-by to pay a few cents to see the world’s smallest horse, the bearded lady or lobster boy. 

Basic elements were repeated in all banners to ensure their durability and marketing appeal. Bright, flat colors or “flash,” with bold outlines were devices used to catch the viewers’ eye. The enormous scale with which each painting was rendered filled every inch of visual space around the circus and emphasized the magnitude of the “wonder” inside. Content was always shocking and exaggerated in order to excite audiences into paying to enter the secret world that existed within the sideshow. Even the signature orange border originated for a practical purpose, to disguise stains caused by the rusting iron rings situated in each corner of a banner, which were necessary to pass rope through for repeated hanging. 

Fred Johnson, World's Strangest Family AKA Lobster Boy (detail), c.1930s. Coll. Howard and Robin Marks

 Exhibited and collected more fervently in recent years, the banners are slowly gaining credibility as aesthetic objects and as valuable ties to America’s past. In the United States, the circus has long been part of our collective memory; most adults today can recount tender yarns of childhood moments spent under the big top. However, sideshows fell out of favor and stopped touring with circuses in the late 1960s, resulting in new generations with no attachment to this history. As we move farther away from the time in which the circus with the sideshow was an annual ritual for nearly every family, historians and collectors race to document and acquire the remaining links before they are lost. 

Remnants of circus culture exist in Florida today; banners and other circus memorabilia are distributed via auctions and galleries throughout the state, but particularly in central Florida. The Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota hosts the Circus Museum, a space devoted to the collection and display of circus paraphernalia such as performance props, wardrobes, rare handbills, records, and circus equipment. Also notable, Gibsonton or “Gibtown,” Florida is famed as a community for retired circus performers, though few are still alive today. 

Unknown artist, The Queen of Tatoo (c. 1960s). Coll. Howard and Robin Marks

In recognition of this precious piece of United States and Florida history, the University Gallery exhibited the majority of a collection assembled by Howard and Robin Marks. They began this collection in the mid-90s when Mr. Marks encountered two quirky banners, Queen of Tattoo and Punch and Judy, at an auction in Tampa. Owners of Gallery on First in Sanford, Florida, and collectors of American self-taught and folk art, the Marks were immediately drawn to the style and subject matter of the banners and began a search for similar paintings. Their growing collection ranges from traditional doorway banners created by widely recognized painters like Fred Johnson and Snap Wyatt, to much smaller, contemporary pieces made by commercial artists as homage to the vanishing art and specifically for the purpose of display in homes and galleries. 

Johnny Meah appears with examples of his current work

 Included in their collection, are four banners by Johnny Meah, banner painter, historian, and retired circus performer. Meah grew up in Connecticut, a short distance from Coney Island, and as a child, he worked alongside his father at carnivals and circuses creating caricatures and line portraits for sale. At about the age of nine, Meah stood beneath a banner painting and was so dazzled by it that when asked by his father if he could paint something like that – Meah couldn’t open his mouth to respond. He was unable to imagine himself creating something so fantastic, yet, over sixty years later, Meah has made a life and successful career of painting sideshow banners. 

Meah’s work has been exhibited across the country in museums and galleries, and is now held in a variety of private collections. He has given lecture-performances throughout the United States and in Europe and his paintings have been featured in documentaries, monographs, films, and magazines. He has also written extensively and given countless interviews on the significance and history of banner paintings. 

Johnny Meah, Family Funhouse (detail), 2000. Coll. Howard and Robin Marks

The charm and intrigue of the paintings brought large volumes of visitors to the University Gallery much in the same way they previously enticed circus-goers to enter sideshows. The exhibition, Sideshow, celebrated, not only the paintings and the artists who created them, but also, the period of time when, before television and computers were mainstream, people came together to gaze with wonder on worlds so different from their own. 

by Heather A. Barrett, M.A., Contributing Writer 

Exhibition Co-Curator, Sideshow 

Visit the gallery and its collections at: www.arts.ufl.edu/galleries

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This tale is, aptly, a tapestry of sorts, as Peter and Sam Ascher told me recently, replete with armies and battles fought, fair maidens, heroes, great houses and even slain “dragons”— all hieroglyphs woven throughout their family saga. 

Left: Antoni Clave, Combat de Coqs (1947), screen-printed on silk crepe (1947).  Find the framed image in the vintage publicity photo, below. All photos courtesy of Ascher family fine arts magazine 

Visionaries, Lida & Zika Ascher, 1946

 It began in 1939 when Zika and Lida Ascher, honeymooning in Norway, learned of the German war machine’s conquest of their beloved Czech homeland. That dramatic turn of events resulted in the Aschers’ immediate relocation to London, where they established a modest textile center, catering to fashion houses, while reinforcing their commitment to artful, exquisite design and print work. 

When Zika finished his military service with British forces, his and Lida’s collaborative venture became a thriving enterprise, renowned for its innovative fabric design, technology and highest- quality product. It was no wonder, then, that the name “Ascher” was on the well-polished lips of ‘les plus hautes’ of the fashion industry! Their trademark was a distinctive combination of sometimes playful, but just as often, important, graphics and art, coupled with fine fabrics for couture design. The houses of Dior, Schiaparelli, Cardin and Lanvin were among their well-heeled clients, and the phrase “fabric by Ascher” became de rigueur for denizens of stylish circles! 

Felix Topolski, London, 1944, screen-printed rayon crepe. The first in the series on rayon, with silk is short supply bacause of the war.

 “My father had an incredible eye for pattern and design,” Zika’s son Peter recalled. “Moreover, he was able to envision exactly which forms, colors and textures would work effectively together, often in repetition, for a given creation.” 

And create they did! Amid London’s rampant patriotism and energy following the war, the innovative husband-wife team embraced the already- popular “commemorative” head scarf—a very practical, even hygienic, consideration for the legion of women then working in previously male-populated industries– making it their own by coupling their already- proven textile production with the burgeoning work of then-quite-accessible contemporary artists. The results were electrifying! A list of project contributors was a virtual Who’s Who of important mid-20th Century talent, including artists Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Alexander Calder, Andre Derain and others.  Feliks Topolski was the first to produce a “square” for the Aschers, aptly depicting a colorful post-war scene, ‘London,1944’, in nostalgic, patriotic fashion. 

Henry Moore, Standing Figures (1946), screen printed silk twill

 Since the war had finally ended, Zika was able to approach members of the French art community for their involvement in the scarf project, but was disappointed with their initial disdain toward his proposal. Quiet by nature, but ever- enterprising, he personally phoned, then met with, Messrs. Matisse, Braque, Berard, Picasso and Derain, all of whom responded favorably. Though, according to the Aschers, a scarf design was never directly procured from Picasso, that artist’s companion, Francoise Gilot, submitted one titled, “Quatre Oiseaux” (below), bearing an uncanny resemblance to her lover’s unmistakable style! Eh bien, d’accord….. YOU decide! 

As for set and costume designer , Denis Malcles, who conjured and contributed the image, “Nocturne”, for Ascher, [producing a] “design of lines, forms and colours…opens new possibilities of creative pleasures…To design a square gives the same pleasure.” So effective was he in evoking a dramatic moment from “La Fiancee du Diable,” on silk crepe, that Sam Ascher called it his favorite of the bunch: “Malcles was able to convey the exact mood of the scene visually and stylistically…very reminiscent of the drama in theater of that era”. 

And then there was Matisse! 

Henri Matisse, Escarpe (1947), screen-printed on silk twill

 Peter and Sam kindly afforded me an up-close glimpse of the Aschers’ copious correspondence with that artist, carefully preserved in a treasured portfolio. The collection comprises handwritten and typed sheets and telegrams, interspersed with business talk, sketches and jovial, light-hearted notes, revealing the close, personal nature of the relationship. In one such communication, Matisse boasts that even though his Ascher-commissioned project is, of course, very important to him, it is, no doubt, even more so, to Zika. The latter, in fact, has been credited with luring Matisse out of a vision-impaired, illness-induced slump: encouraging him to use his remaining creative abilities productively, Zika helped spawn the artist’s “large forms” phase, an integral, dynamic limb of his later body of work. 

The Ascher scarf sensation swept the fashion world, transcending mere headwear, cleverly weaving into one art, textile and haute couture. Indeed, in 1947, dozens of the creations were mounted for display on easels at Le Fevre Gallery, enthusiastically received as hang-able as well as wearable, and appreciated as fine art! The nationalistic pride and esprit de corps that the scarves bespoke and no doubt engendered, as well, only added to their allure! 

Artists' squares displayed in Chicago department store, 1948. See work by Antoni Clave, Combat de Coqs (1947), framed here, above

 In spite of, and perhaps even because of, war-time challenges in obtaining certain dear textiles, the Aschers, already long-experienced with fine wool, silk, linen and other fibers, became forerunners in innovative fabric production. Their use of nylon for domestic products, as an example, in lieu of the silk designated for export, made the scarves more readily accessible in Britain and other still-depressed economic regions; finer pieces were marked for sale internationally, allowing for higher profits from better-off markets farther abroad. 

Though the Ascher scarf saga is aesthetically and historically rich, even more exciting, perhaps, may be its chapters that are yet to be spun! Father-son team Peter and Sam are currently gathering the threads of Zika’s legacy, intending to capture the imaginations of contemporary creators—perhaps channeling the likes of Moore, Matisse, and, dare we presume, Picasso– in a reprisal of Ascher scarves! 

Francoise Gilot, Quatre Oiseaux (c.1947). Not seen since production, until here in this article

 “One of the main goals of our project is to reproduce good art and make it wearable,” confides Sam. “And the scarves will be of the highest quality.” 

No doubt. No corners cut, concessions made or compromise accepted…a true homage to the tale first lived and woven by Zika and Lida , now re-vitalized and re-worked by Peter and Sam Ascher. So, the legend continues….and the tapestry’s fabric materializes slowly, surely…..spectacularly! 

In a slipstream from the cascading silken scarves, I end my visit imbued with a nostalgic glow from the Aschers’ heartfelt rendering of their noble family lore…as well as with a sense of eager anticipation. If past is, indeed, prelude, then surely we are in for something quite phenomenal! 

by Katherine Arcano, Contributing Writer & Editor 

* * * * 

Visit the Acsher scarf site at: www.ascherstudio.com 

Read more about another Ascher-inspired work by Henri Matisse in ARTES, http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/03/henri-matisse-collage-wall-hanging-debuted-at-armory-show-new-york/ 

Read a museum review in which Ascher scarves were featured at: http://www.westword.com/2007-02-01/culture/fashion-art-ascher-scarves-from-post-war-england-lucienne-day-queen-of-1950s-british-textile-design/

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Fast forward to the present day and I have made it to the promised-land ,by virtue of being a non-executive director of W.Moorcroft PLC. I am quite simply Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory. Having had the benefit of a sneak preview of The Richard Wright Collection of Moorcroft Pottery, I can reliably inform you it offers a fascinating selection that illustrates the varied output of this much-loved British Art Pottery, with an abundance of rarities.  

Above: (detail) William Moorcroft, Cornflower, a large vase (c.1913) fine arts magazine  

W. Moorcroft for Townsend & Co.,Landscape, a twin-handles Florian vase (c.1903)

William Moorcroft was born in Burslem, one of the Staffordshire pottery towns, in 1872. After the Burslem School of Art, where William proved himself to have a considerable artistic talent, he moved to London in 1895 to study at the National Art Training School, later The Royal College of Art. Two years later year, he was awarded his Art Master’s Certificate, which would normally propel most students towards a career teaching art. William, however, had set his sights on becoming a potter and when offered the position of designer by the china and earthenware manufacturers, James Macintyre & Company, in Burslem, he eagerly accepted.  

Macintyre, who had begun producing art pottery in 1893, enlisted the services of Harry Barnard, the well-respected designer and modeller formerly employed at Doulton’s Lambeth studio. Barnard was asked to develop a pâte-sur-pâte type of decoration that involved the building up of layers of slip in low relief. The technique was already well established, having been perfected at the nearby Stoke factory of Minton & Co by the former Sèvres decorator Louis Solon. Macintyre decided to christen their new art pottery ‘Gesso Faience’, but it failed to excite would-be buyers.  

Moorcroft’s initial designs were registered in 1898, retailing under the banner of Aurelian Ware, and incorporated the use of under glaze cobalt blue with iron red-on-glaze and gilt decoration that complemented his new and inventive shapes. Despite the demise of Gesso Ware, Moorcroft recognised the potential offered by slip-trailed decoration and set about producing floral designs applied to radical shapes that sat well with the Arts and Crafts ethos promoted by William Morris.  

William Moorcroft, the boy from Burslem

As early as 1899, the young designer’s Peacock Feather and stylised floral designs, retailed as Florian Ware, were attracting international critical acclaim when exhibited in showrooms of the prestigious New York retailer Tiffany & Co.  

During the ensuing 15 years, Moorcroft’s fertile imagination unleashed a regular flow of quite often breathtaking designs that were by no means limited to floral. As early as 1902, he had produced a design featuring Japanese ornamental carp made for the London retailer, Osler, and painted in tones of blue and mauve. The Richard Wright Collection includes a similar offering, but in the more elusive yellow and blue coloured palette. A flambé version of this much sought-after design made £16,000 when offered by Bonhams this year.  

The year 1902 also witnessed the introduction of the first landscape designs featuring tall trees set amid an undulating countryside and adapted to fit a variety of vases of differing size (a fine example of which can be seen opposite). The pattern was initially marketed as Burslem Ware by Liberty & Co of London and each piece carried Moorcroft’s distinctive hand-painted signature.  

W. Moorcroft, Claremont, a tobacco jar (c.1922)

One such vase found its way to me when I was appearing on the BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow from Petworth House in West Sussex a few years ago. The owner was obviously unimpressed by Moorcroft’s oeuvre and kept the item at the back of a wardrobe. Despite my efforts to convince her of the pot’s artistic merits, this elderly matriarch remained tight-lipped and stony-faced – even after I offered a valuation in the region of £3,000. It’s sad to think that the stuff of a Moorcroft collector’s dream is probably still languishing in the back of a wardrobe somewhere in Sussex.  

Moorcroft’s association with Liberty & Co was to prove a lifeline to him when, in 1913, James Macintyre & Co decided to concentrate its production efforts towards the more lucrative electrical components market and to part company with the potter. It is debatable whether the two parties came to an amicable separation, with William building his own, then state-of-the-art, pottery in nearby Sandbach Road, Cobridge, aided and abetted by Liberty & Co.  

W. Moorcroft, Claremont, a silver overlaid picther (1910)

New patterns were quickly introduced including utilitarian tableware using a porcelaneous body similar to that used by Macintyre in their electrical output and referred to initially as Blue Porcelain. The speckled blue tableware was a much-needed success that soon became synonymous with Liberty’s new Tudor Tearooms where it was known as Moorcroft Blue. The advent of the First World War led to an increase in export trade allied with government commissions to produce shaving mugs and hospital inhalers, many of which were hand-potted, thereby allowing William to retain much of his workforce.  

It was during the post-war years that Moorcroft developed his reputation for producing richly coloured wares that continued to draw upon floral, fruit and landscape inspiration. Of all his many and splendid designs, the most successful of the inter-war years is unquestionably his flagship Pomegranate pattern.  

In 1928, the commercial success of the company was enhanced after being granted the Royal Warrant, henceforth until the death of Queen Mary in 1953. The inter-war years proved to also be a period of continuing innovation, resulting in a relatively unsuccessful endeavour to produce metallic ‘Lustre’ glazes on a commercial scale. The company, however, achieved a much better response to its Flambé pieces that covered standard designs with a deep, almost blood-red glaze and which are coveted by today’s collectors.  

The Moorcroft factory, Cobridge, England, 1930

The popularity of the Art Deco style appears to have been almost begrudgingly acknowledged in a series of often pale salt-glazed designs that feature stylised Waving Corn, Yachts, Peacock Feathers and more traditional landscapes, the latter above and below bands of blue and yellow chevrons. However, William Moorcroft’s decision to introduce such neutral ‘earth’ colours was motivated by his recognition that far more serious competition came from the growing number of studio potters such as William Staite-Murray and Bernard Leach than those who might prefer the more geometric or abstract designs of Clarice Cliff and her ilk.  

Following William’s death in 1945, the factory came under the leadership of his eldest son Walter Moorcroft. Walter shared his father’s passion for flowers and he proved to be a first-class draughtsman by providing a catalogue that encompassed a skilful array of botanical designs. Moorcroft junior had the advantage of being better travelled than his father and consequently keen to introduce more exotic blooms such as hibiscus and Bermuda lilies against his own choice of distinctive ground colours. He was connected to the company for the remaining 60 years of his life. He finally retired in 1985, and died in September 2002.  

W. Moorcroft, Carp, a rare double-gourd vase (c.1902)

During the intervening years, the financial stability of the company began to ebb and flow and ownership passed from family hands during the 1970s before being acquired in 1987 by Hugh Edwards, city lawyer and passionate Moorcroft collector, and Richard Dennis, publisher and aforementioned respected dealer in art pottery. Together they managed to restore the fortunes of the company by installing Richard’s talented wife, Sally Tuffin, as head designer, before she and Richard parted company with Hugh Edwards in 1993 to set up their now successful, Dennis China Works.  

Moorcroft Pottery continues to offer an ever-expanding repertoire of quality design that never fails to surprise and please the 12,000 members of its Collectors’ Club alongside an ever-growing international clientele. Yesterday, today and no doubt tomorrow the end result remains undeniably Moorcroft, and The Richard Wright Collection encapsulates the best of this enviable heritage.  

by Eric Knowles, Contributing Writer-at-Large  

London, England  

Broadcaster, Author, Lecturer, Eric Knowles, appears on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and prepared this article for the autumn 2010 issue of Bonhams Magazine. It appears here with the kind permission and support of Bonhams, with offices in major cities throughout the world.  

For a full schedule of current auctions, go to www.bonhams.com

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Left: John Andrew Rice. Courtesy NCSA, BMC Papers.  

Robert E. Lee Hall porch. Courtesy NCSA, BMC Papers

At the center of the Rollins controversy was John Andrew Rice, Professor of Classics. A gadfly with an ingrained dissatisfaction with the status quo and authority figures, Rice, along with others, had challenged President Hamilton Holt’s progressive educational program. In April 1933, Rice was fired. Soon thereafter, Ralph Reed Lounsbury and Frederick Raymond Georgia, who had objected to Rollins’s violation of Rice’s academic freedom, were also fired. [1] These three along with Theodore Dreier, who had resigned, found themselves unemployed in the depths of the Great Depression. It seemed an opportune time to create the ideal college that had long been the subject of late-night discussions. They had two months in which to locate a ready-made campus, write a charter and obtain a certificate of incorporation, hire faculty and recruit students, and organize their ideas into a coherent philosophy. Literature teacher Joseph Martin recalled that the informal opening ceremony on the porch of Robert E. Lee Hall was similar to a “pick-up game of football,” an occasion “happily terminated by lunch.” [2]  By the end of the first quarter there were twelve teachers and twenty-two students. 

John Rice had been at odds with administrations at all colleges and universities where he had taught, and the experience at Rollins had only enhanced his discontent. Black Mountain College would be owned and administered by the faculty. There would be a Board of Fellows composed of several faculty elected by their peers and one student elected by students. The Board of Fellows would manage financial matters and the hiring and firing of faculty. Faculty would control all academic matters. An Advisory Board, with only the power of persuasion, was primarily a list of prominent individuals who believed in the college’s ideals and generously lent their names to increase the college’s credibility to a skeptical public. Among its members were John Dewey, Walter Gropius, and Alfred Einstein. There was to be no endowment, and donations were accepted only if they came with no effort to influence the college’s educational program. 

Woodworking shop. Photo by Josef Breitenbach. Courtesy, Center for Creative Photography, U. Arizona, Tucson; Josef & Yaye Breitenbach Charitable Foundation, N.Y.

Essentially the founders’ intention was to educate students for productive, participatory life in a democratic society. This was to be achieved through a curriculum which encouraged independent, critical thinking and life in a community where students would mature emotionally into responsible adults. At the center of the educational program was a close relationship between faculty and students and responsibility by the students for many aspects of their educational experience. Students entered in the Junior Division, a period of general study, and after passing a two-day examination covering all aspects of the curriculum, moved to the Senior Division, a period of specialization. Graduation was achieved by oral and written examinations by an outside examiner who was an authority in the student’s area of study. It was a rigorous process and only about sixty students graduated in the college’s twenty-four year history. Although term-end grades were recorded in the office for transfer purposes, the student did not know what grades were given. Of great significance for the college’s history and influence, the practice of the arts would be at the center of the learning experience. 

 The Black Mountain lifestyle and traditions evolved in the first years and were essential to the creative, unstructured environment. In its idealism, the college resembled a small religious community; in its reliance on limited means, a pioneering village; in its intense and experimental arts activity, a Bohemian arts colony; in its informal life style and woodland setting, a summer camp. Strongly influenced by the personalities of those who taught and studied at the college, the tenor of the community changed year by year. National and international events such as the Great Depression, World War II, and McCarthyism altered its history and were a catalyst for new programs and possibilities. 

Robert E. Lee Hall and Dining Hall. North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, North Carolina

 The Blue Ridge Assembly buildings provided the college with an ideal campus. Robert E. Lee Hall with its three-story high wooden columns was an imposing structure. One entered into a large lobby that extended through to the back of the building. On either side and on the second and third floors were rows of dormitory-style rooms used by YMCA guests at summer conferences. Faculty without children and students lived in Lee Hall, and those with children, in nearby cottages on the property. There were so many rooms that each student and faculty member had a study although students shared rooms for sleeping. The dining hall in which students, faculty and families shared meals was located behind Lee Hall and joined by a covered walkway. 

There were classes in the mornings and evenings. In the afternoons everyone took part in a work program that included general maintenance, work on the college farm which was started the first year, and office and administrative work. Dress was informal with most wearing jeans during the daytime and casual clothes for dinner. Isolated in the Blue Ridge Mountains, far from any major metropolitan center, energies were focused inward on study and college activities 

Danse Macabre directed by Xanti Schawinsky (1938). George Hendrickson Papers, BMC Project.

There were no bells to announce the beginning or end of classes and no students rushing with books from one class to another. Limited financial means encouraged innovation, and the students and faculty provided their own entertainment in the form of weekend concerts and drama productions, hikes in the mountains, parties (either simple or with elaborate decorations), after dinner dancing or community sings, or hikes in the mountains. For students such as Sewell ‘Si’ Sillman, it was the not the “highlights” – the luminaries and intense summer sessions in the arts – but the “day-to-day routine that was really Black Mountain.” [3] It was the interaction among individuals and the integration of learning with work, community, and recreation that had a profound effect on students.  With considerable effort the college managed to achieve publicity in national publications, and visitors, both the curious and the committed, arrived to observe the college, among them John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller, May Sarton, and Thornton Wilder. Visitors were frequently called on for group discussions, concerts and lectures to the community. 

John Rice’s class. NCSA, BMC Papers.

In the first semester the college brought Josef Albers, abstract artist and former teacher of the fundamental course at the recently-closed Bauhaus, from Germany to teach art. At Black Mountain, he adapted these courses, formulated to train professional designers, to general education. His wife Anni Albers, eminent weaver, taught weaving and textile design. From their arrival, Black Mountain College was to be the setting for a dynamic fusion of American Progressivism and European Modernism, and the college was to be associated with modern art and innovative teaching in the visual arts. 

Josef Albers and Robert de Niro, Sr. NCSA, BMC Papers

John Rice and Josef Albers, both born in 1888, were charismatic teachers and most in the community took their courses. In appearance and personality they were polar opposites. Rice was a Southerner, short and rotund, with a wink in his eye and a quick wit. Albers was slim and ascetic, disciplined and focused. Rice prided himself on his ability to assess and reveal the foibles of others, a practice that was to be a source of controversy in the community. Among Rice’s courses were creative writing and a class called Plato in which students examined concepts and questioned assumptions. Albers taught classes in design, color, painting, and drawing. Born in Brooklyn in 1902, Theodore Dreier, who taught mathematics and physics, was tall, athletic, and idealistic. His family was well-to-do and had close connections to the art world. He immediately assumed the role of fund-raiser, and for sixteen years, his dedicated efforts and endless proselytizing were responsible for the college’s survival. John Evarts, a young musician with a gift for improvisation, taught music. He was able through his piano playing after dinner and on weekends to bring the often-divided college together for dance and song, and when he left to join the war effort in 1942, he was irreplaceable. Other faculty in the 1930s included Rhodes scholar Joseph Walford Martin in literature, Robert Wunsch in theater, and Frederick Georgia in chemistry. 

Theodore Dreier (left). NCSA, BMC Papers.

Josef and Anni Albers were the first of many refugee artists and scholars hired by the college. Some had already arrived in the United States; others the college brought directly from Europe. Among those teaching in the 1930s were Fritz Moellenhoff, former student of Hans Sachs who had been assistant director of the Kuranstalten Westend in Berlin, and Erwin Straus, a neurologist and a noted phenomenologist in the field of psychology who had been editor of Der Nervenartz and a member of the faculty at the University of Berlin; Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky, artist and theater director who had studied with Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus; and Heinrich Jalowetz, along with Anton Webern and Alban Berg among Schoenberg’s first students, who had been director of the Cologne Opera before he lost his position when Hitler came to power in 1933. Jalowetz was one of the most beloved teachers at Black Mountain and died and was buried there in 1946. These accomplished individuals had been leaders in their fields, and their respect for disciplined study provided a critical balance to the college’s informal structure. They both changed and were changed by the college. 

John Evarts and Heinrich Jalowetz. NCSA, BMC Papers

Although in the beginning – largely at the urging of John Rice – there was an attempt to determine what were acceptable Black Mountain teaching methods, this critical assessment was eventually abandoned, and teachers were left to decide how to run their classes. Some lectured and required regular papers; others did not. Generally, a completed assignment was a ticket to class. There were tests in some classes but no scheduled school-wide end of the term examinations. An attempt to teach an interdisciplinary class in the first year was not repeated. Essentially the unending conversation in the dining hall and informal gatherings was a far more effective form of interdisciplinary education that a formal class. In the cases where there was more than one teacher in a field, faculty worked together on the curriculum, but there were no formal departments. 

The administration of the college was a time-consuming responsibility for the faculty. Generally, decisions were arrived at by consensus, and Board of Fellows, faculty, student and community meetings were endless. There were committees to handle all aspects of college life. Without a separate administration to settle disputes, all too often differences in opinion became explosive conflicts and ended with a group of faculty and a coterie of their student supporters leaving, a loss the college could ill afford. 

Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, Designs for a Lake Eden Campus. Photograph Ezra Stoller © Esto

The 1930s ended with the resignation of John Rice in 1940 after a long leave-of-absence and the move in June 1941 by the college to its own property Lake Eden. The Blue Ridge owners were constantly in search of a more lucrative tenant, and in 1937 the college had purchased the Lake Eden property north of the Village of Black Mountain as a hedge against a sudden ouster. In 1939 Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer were commissioned to design a modern, unified campus which would provide for music and art studios and workshops, classrooms, common rooms for community gatherings, a dining hall, faculty housing and other facilities.  In the spring of 1940, when the faculty began to raise funds for the buildings, they discovered that, while donors would make small contributions for the annual running of the college, they would require an administrative structure with a guarantee of longevity and continuity of purpose to make large contributions. The situation was further complicated by the buildup of wartime production and the fact that Weatherford had found a new tenant and had given the college notice that they would have to vacate the property at the end of the 1941 spring semester. 

Lawrence Kocher, former editor of the Architectural Record and a long-time advocate for the college, was hired to design simpler, modern buildings which could be constructed by faculty and students working with a contractor.  The property had been developed as a summer camp and inn, and there were two lodges which could be used for dormitories, a dining hall, and a number of cottages, all in a rustic mountain style. The year 1940-41 was the most cohesive in the college’s history as everyone pulled together to construct the Studies Building, to winterize existing buildings, to construct a house for the kitchen staff, and to begin work on a barn and additional faculty cottages. [4] 

Studies Building. NCSA, BMC Papers

Black Mountain College was able to survive the war years only by taking out a second mortgage on the college property. Most of the men students and younger faculty were drafted or left to join the war effort, and those who remained were largely European refugees and women students. Despite travel and building restrictions, the college had a vibrant academic program. Among the new faculty were Eric Bentley, a young Englishman and Brechtian scholar who had graduated from Yale University and taught at UCLA. Two new music teachers, both refugees, were Fritz Cohen, cofounder of the Jooss Ballet and composer of the score for the dance, The Green Table, and Edward Lowinsky, a young scholar of Early Music. The college farm thrived and provided essential food when wartime rationing was in effect. 

Studies Building construction. NCSA, BMC Papers

At Blue Ridge, the college had to vacate the buildings in the summers when the YMCA held its summer assemblies. In 1940, 1941 and 1942 at Lake Eden it held a regular summer session and a work camp to help with the construction of new buildings and to provide the farm with workers. In 1943 it sponsored a Seminar on America for Foreign Scholars, Teachers, and Artists. In 1944, in addition to the summer session and work camp, it sponsored music and art institutes. These intense summer programs in the arts which attracted a large number of students, some of whom remained as fulltime students, were ultimately to alter the history and influence of the college. In the summer of 1944 the Music Institute was a celebration of Arnold Schoenberg’s seventieth birthday. Although Schoenberg was unable due to failing health to travel from California, the Institute brought together leading performers and interpreters of his music for an intense series of concerts and lectures. The Art Institute had as its faculty muralist Jean Charlot, sculptor José de Creeft, painter Amédée Ozenfant, and photographers Barbara Morgan and Josef Breitenbach. The college had to rent rooms across the valley at Blue Ridge to accommodate the students. Faculty in the summers of 1945 and 1946 included Will Burtin, Lyonel Feininger, Fannie Hillsmith, Jacob Lawrence, Leo Lionni, Robert Motherwell, Beaumont Newhall and Ossip Zadkine in art, and in music, Erwin Bodky, Alfred Einstein, Eva Heinetz, Hugo Kauder, and Josef Marx, among others. 

As the college was enveloped in an intense round of classes, concerts, and lectures in the summer of 1944, it was simultaneously embroiled in what was without question the most vituperative internal conflict in its history. The previous year a number of fractious issues had torn the college, the most difficult being that of integration. North Carolina was a segregated state, and there were those who feared for the college’s safety if it were to integrate. Finally, the issue was resolved with a decision to permit two black women students to enroll for the summer. Nerves were still raw over the integration debate when in the middle of the summer session, two women students who had hitchhiked to visit Eric Bentley, who was teaching at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, were arrested in Chattanooga on their return to the college and jailed. The crisis culminated in the resignations of Bentley, Cohen and his wife dancer Elsa Kahl, Clark Forman, and languages teacher Frances de Graaff, along with a large coterie of students. 

College farm. NCSA, BMC Papers

As the international conflict came to an end in the summer of 1945, a critically wounded Black Mountain College began slowly to rebuild. Black students were admitted for the regular sessions. Recruitment was not easy, and the college found that few were able to attend a college that did not offer an accredited degree. New faculty members were hired including M.C. Richards, a young scholar from the University of Chicago, to teach writing and literature, and her husband Albert William Levi in social sciences and philosophy. Max Wilhelm Dehn, eminent Frankfurt geometer, taught mathematics and philosophy, and Fritz Hansgirg, metallurgist who had been hired during the war, remained to teach chemistry. Theodore Rondthaler, a North Carolinian from an esteemed Moravian family, arrived to teach Latin, history and literature. John Wallen, who was exploring methods of group dynamics, taught psychology, and David Corkran, former headmaster at the North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, Illinois, taught history. When the Alberses were on sabbatical, Ilya Bolotowksy taught art, and Trude Guermonprez Elsesser and Franziska Mayer, weaving and textile design. 

Summer Session String Quartet. Nikolai Graudan, Lorna Freedman Kolisch, Rudolph Kolisch, Marcel Dick. Photograph by Maja Apelman. Courtesy BMC Project

Approval under the GI Bill of Rights was essential to the college’s survival after the war, and with that approval a number of students, attracted both by the arts curriculum and by the opportunity to study in an unregimented environment, enrolled. As the student body swelled to almost a hundred students, there was concern that it was becoming too large.  The GIs who were older and who had experienced the discipline of military life and the horrors of conflict were eager to pursue a delayed education. Among those enrolled during this period, both GIs and recent high school graduates, were filmmaker Arthur Penn, writer James Leo Herlihy, and artists Ruth Asawa, Joseph Fiore, Lorna Blaine Halper, Ray Johnson, Lore Kadden Lindenfeld, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Sewell Sillman, Kenneth Snelson, John Urbain, and Susan Weil. 

Robert Motherwell (Summer 1945). Photo by Margaret W. Peterson. Elaine Schmitt Urbain Papers, BMC Project.

In the summer of 1948, Josef Albers organized a Summer Session in the Arts which was be a pivotal moment in the college’s arts programs. Although previously both the regular sessions and the special summer sessions had brought together American-born and refugee faculty, the Europeans, far more accomplished than the younger American teachers, had been dominant. The 1948 summer faculty included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, and Buckminster Fuller, all at the time unrecognized, but artists who would become seminal figures in the arts in the United States during the second half of the Twentieth Century. Buckminster Fuller, who was a last minute replacement, attempted to erect his first geodesic dome that summer. When it failed, it was dubbed the “supine” dome, and everyone cheerfully dismissed the “failure” as part of the process of experimental and a step on the way to success. Cage and Cunningham captivated the imagination of the community. They were to remain a presence at Black Mountain through 1953 as visitors and as summer faculty. 

During the 1948-49 school year, the college once again was split into opposing camps. At issue was an effort to find a way to provide for the college’s survival. GI Bill revenues were declining, and it was nearly impossible to raise the funds annually to keep the college open. Many plans were considered. One was to have the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill adopt Black Mountain as an experimental school. Another was to narrow the curriculum to focus on the arts with limited offerings in other areas. The crisis ended with the resignations in the spring of 1949 of Theodore Dreier, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Charlotte Schlesinger, and Trude Guermonprez. 

Lunch on the dining hall porch. Photo by Felix Krowinski, Sr. © BMC Project

During the 1950s, even as the college began to sell land to survive, it experienced an explosion of creative activity. Poet and historian Charles Olson, who had taught one long weekend a month during the 1948-49 school year, returned to teach fulltime in 1951. Students Joseph Fiore and Pete Jennerjahn were hired to teach art, and Hazel Larsen Archer, to teach photography. M.C. Richards remained to teach “reading and writing.” Katherine Litz taught dance, and composers Stefan Wolpe and Lou Harrison, music. Wesley Huss taught theater. In the last years, in addition to Olson, writers Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Robert Hellman taught writing. Creeley, who was living in Mallorca, edited the Black Mountain Review, which gave a coherent means of publication for Olson, Creeley, Duncan and their associates. Pete Jennerjahn taught a Light, Sound, Movement Workshop which explored non-literary multimedia performance. The press, which previously had been used primarily to print college forms and concert and drama programs, was used by the students and faculty to print their own writing. Students during the 1950s included John Chamberlain, Edward Dorn, Francine du Plessix Gray, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Rauschenberg, Michael Rumaker, Cy Twombly, and Jonathan Williams. 

Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Supine Dome’ (Summer 1948). Photo, Beaumont Newhall. Courtesy Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Estate. Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, N.M. © 2010, Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Estate

Through the summer of 1953 the college continued to sponsor summer sessions which attracted exceptional faculty, including John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Paul Goodman, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Ben Shahn, Theodoros Stamos, and Jack Tworkov. In 1952, faced with an ever smaller student body, Charles Olson proposed a radical change in the college program. Already, through attrition, the college had become a college of the arts. Under Olson’s plan the college would abandon any remaining vestiges of progressive education such as the work program, the farm, and community in education in favor of a series of year-round institutes which would bring together major figures in the arts, the sciences and the humanities.  The Pottery Institute in the fall of 1952 had as its faculty Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Soestsu Yanagi, and Marguerite Wildenhain. An Institute in the New Sciences of Man had Marie-Louise von Franz and Robert Braidwood as guest speakers. The 1953 summer institute, the last of the major summer programs, featured potters Peter Voulkos, Warren MacKenzie, and Daniel Rhodes along with a general faculty in art, dance, theater and music. At summer’s end, faced with a greatly diminished student body and faculty, the lower campus with the Studies Building and Dining Hall were closed, and students and faculty moved up the hill into faculty cottages. It was impossible for the small coterie to keep up the property or to manage the farm. 

Charles Olson and daughter Kate, Black Mountain College. Photo by Mary Ann Giusti. Courtesy Mary Ann Giusti

By the fall of 1956 there were three teachers: Charles Olson, Wesley Huss, and Joseph Fiore, and Fiore was taking a year’s sabbatical. Olson and Huss decided that the time had come to close the Lake Eden campus. Students, including a group who had worked that summer with Robert Duncan on Medea: The Maidenhead, the first of his Medea triology, returned with him to San Francisco to continue their studies as part of Olson’s “dispersed” university. Olson remained at Lake Eden to formulate other programs and deal with legal issues. Since 1951, the faculty had been paid half-salaries in money (and at times beef from the farm) and the other half had been listed as a debt against the college. Three sued the college for the unpaid salaries, both because they were seniors and badly in need of income and because they, along with others, felt the time had come for the college to close. Olson traveled to San Francisco to deliver his, Special View of History lectures as part of the Black Mountain curriculum. In March a judge ordered that academic programs cease until debts were paid and legal issues resolved. The final issue of the Black Mountain Review appeared in the fall of 1957. Olson, the last rector, had arranged in advance for its printing costs. On January 9, 1962, the Final Account was approved and the college books were closed respectably with all debts paid and a balance of zero. 

Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. Mary Emma Harris Papers

The influence of Black Mountain College and the productivity of its faculty and students has been extensive and diverse. Many have had stellar careers; others have achieved significant recognition as university professors, early childhood educators, artists, musicians, writers, and scientists. Institutions as diverse as Marlboro College in Vermont, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and Catlin Gable School in Portland, Oregon have been influenced by Black Mountain. The “Black Mountain Poets” include both poets and prose writers who published in the Black Mountain Review, some of whom were never at the college. The designation excludes other Black Mountain writers who were at the college but did not publish in the Review. Among the artists, there is no identifiable Black Mountain style. This diversity, rather than a limitation, is a tribute to the college’s fostering of independent thinking and working. 

Essential to the success of Black Mountain College was its administration by the faculty; this also was the root of many of its problems. In the instances when the college sought the assistance of a professional administrator, inevitably there was talk of a standard curriculum, predictable results, and a conventional appearance. In each case, the college refused to exchange the open, receptive, flexible atmosphere for the possibility of longevity. A critical part of the college program was its willingness to let things happen, not to create a circumscribed program with a predictable result. Fuller’s “Supine Dome,” the founding of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, John Cage’s first “happening,” and Josef Albers’s design and color curriculum which he later taught at Yale University were not planned outcomes. 

More than five decades have passed since Black Mountain College closed. Still, its story continues to have an impact in the arts and education worldwide. Biographies are being written, documentaries filmed, and exhibitions organized. The energy and ideas engendered are a continuing catalyst for new beginnings in the arts and education. 

 by Mary Emma Harris ©, 2010, Contributing Writer 

Mary Emma Harris is an independent scholar and author of, The Arts at Black Mountain College (The MIT Press, 1987). She is Chair of the Black Mountain College Project, Inc. ( www.bmcproject.org), a not-for-profit organization devoted to the documentation of the history and influence of Black Mountain College.

____________________________________ 

Legend 

BMC Project. Black Mountain College Project, Inc., New York, New York. 

NCSA, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina. 

BMC Papers, Black Mountain College Papers. 

BMC Research Project Papers. Black Mountain College Research Project Papers. 

References: 

[1]  The American Association of University Professors investigated. Their report essentially vindicated Rice and his followers. See Arthur O. Lovejoy and Austin S. Edwards, “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Rollins College Report,” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, 19 (November 1933):416-39. 

 [2] [Joseph Walford Martin], “Black Mountain College: 1933,” NCSA, BMC Papers. 

 [3] Interview with Sewell Sillman by Mary Emma Harris, 7 March 1971, NCSA, BMC Research Project Papers. Permission Sewell Sillman Foundation. 

 [4] For a detailed description of the architectural program at the college, see www.bmcproject.org – architecture. 

See a related article on Black Mountain College alumnus, Sewell Sillman at:  http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/03/griswold-museum%e2%80%99s-krieble-gallery-features-modern-art-of-sewell-sillman/

Navajo rug. A 'transitional' piece using both diamonds and pictoral motifs

 Two recent exhibitions looked at the multiple stories woven into textiles. Navajo Textiles: Diamonds, Dreams, and Landscapes was a year-long exhibition in three themed rotations held at the University of Colorado’s Museum of Natural History in Boulder, Colorado (May 31, 2009 – May 31, 2010). Trading Cloth and Culture was the spring exhibition at the Arizona State University’s Museum of Anthropology (April 8 – June 30, 2010). Both were created under the supervision of Judy M. Newland, the director of ASU’s Museum of Anthropology. In a two-part series, Newland and other members of the faculty and staff at ASU and CU have worked together to produce an important and unique narrative regarding the Native American culture of the Southwest and the important role that woven artifacts have played in understanding the indigenous communities of the far west and the global influences that affect the design work, even today. All pieces pictured are from the University of Colorado textile collection Fine Arts Magazine

The Story Within The Threads

Navajo Loom and weaver, circ. 1920

The University of Colorado, Museum of Natural History, in Boulder, Colorado has a marvelous record of celebrating Southwestern textiles. In their latest exhibition, Navajo Weaving: Diamonds, Dreams, Landscapes, more than ninety textiles were featured in three themed rotations, each with a different stylistic emphasis.

While exploring the approach taken for the exhibition, I thought about my Navajo friends and my own weaving background, and discovered that a friend from my past, Melanie Yazzie, is now an art professor at Colorado University (CU). After reconnecting and discussing ideas, we decided to collaborate. She brings a unique perspective to the project. She grew up near Ganado, on the Navajo reservation, where she watched her grandmother weave. As a printmaker, she brings all of these influences to bear in her own work. We spent countless hours looking at wonderful textiles and contemplating the weavers and their lives. During this process, themes emerged, and we eventually divided the textiles into groups to be exhibited in three rotations. Our collaboration brought a special point of view to the show, as she provided a sensitive cultural and artistic context to my love of weaving and exhibit development.

Wedge weave technique, 'slave blanket' made by Navajo servant in Hispanic household (pre-1876)

The Joe Ben Wheat Collection, at the University of Colorado, Museum of Natural History, is a world-class assemblage, encompassing more than 800 fine textiles from three Southwestern traditions – Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish American. The late Joe Ben Wheat, a CU professor and curator, was one of the great scholars of Southwestern textiles. He began his research at the university in 1972, developing the collection into one of the most historically and culturally significant collections in the country. Wheat not only identified and documented many rare pieces, but he studied the stories, people and culture behind the textiles. His systematic approach to the study of textiles established a foundation on which textile scholars have continued to build.

Mexican satillo serape, with Navajo center diamond influence (circ. 1750)

The collection is particularly strong in pieces for which Wheat was able to establish historical dates. They include, among others: the oldest documented Navajo blanket, collected by a US army officer in 1847 during the Mexican War; a wedge weave blanket woven about 1875 by a Navajo servant of a Hispanic household in southwestern Colorado and a rare “blue border manta” from about 1750, thought to be Pueblo, but later determined by Wheat to be a very early Navajo weaving. These documented pieces and Wheat’s dedication to using multiple research tools to compare and corroborate evidence established this rich research collection, which continues to grow through donations and purchases.

These treasured pieces have been exhibited many times, and are often featured in special programs and behind-the-scenes tours. The new exhibition, however, showcased the depth of the collection and included textiles never before been exhibited; a small number of 19th century rugs with the majority of pieces from the 20th century. The museum’s Navajo textile collection is part of a larger Southwestern tradition and illustrates many cross-cultural influences from Pueblo and Hispanic weavers. The borrowing of ideas and motifs is clearly seen in the textiles on display. Many of the Navajo textiles are woven by anonymous weavers and only fragments of their historical significance remain.

Navajo rug. Center diamond shows Hispanic influence (1925)

The first rotation, Diamonds and Beyond, focused on the diamond motif and included textiles that are vibrant in color and design. Navajo weavers have long used the diamond as a central element in their rugs and blankets. The earliest classic striped textiles were energized with the expressive use of diamonds, helping us see shapes or break them down, leading the eye on a path across the surface. They are also used as an organizing principle to make sense of the movement and activity contained in diagonal and zigzag lines. The visual power and graphic quality found in these designs is a testament to the creativity of generations of Navajo weavers. An emphasis on the contemporary weaver’s approach to design and the arrangement of design elements within each textile was highlighted through the work of rising star, Morris Muskett, a Navajo weaver and jewelry maker, who has several pieces in the Boulder collection, which also includes award-winning weavings from the Santa Fe Indian Market.

(detail) Yei figure represents Navajo dieties (date unknown)

The second rotation, Dreams, Schemes, and Stories, include narrative and image-based weavings, focused on the multiple approaches weavers use when designing textiles. Rugs developed in the 1880s contain innovative combinations of abstract patterns and pictorial elements such feathers, bows and arrows, cowboys, trains and all manner of animals; all reflecting changes occurring in the Southwest at that time. The contemporary piece by, Glenmae Tsosie, acquired in 1972, is a wonderful reinterpretation of modern art. Several ‘Storm’ pattern rugs show strong development of schemes, probably devised by traders. A large number of textiles using yei and yeibichei figures drawn from sacred imagery were on display during this rotation, including a unique vest with a yei figure on the front and back.

The third rotation, Landscapes, featured a variety of Wide Ruins, Chinle, and Crystal-style rugs, demonstrating how the Southwestern landscape influenced Navajo cultural and artistic traditions. Many of these textiles are made with yarns dyed with plants from the Navajo reservation. In this portion of the show, special emphasis is given to the art of natural dyeing and the aesthetic impact of color.

Navajo rug. Stylized corn plant, a dietary staple (1945)

Weaving comes from life experiences, the landscape, family, community and the outside world. Navajo weaving is a cultural expression in which each rug contains a woven history of the people. Change has been a constant in Navajo weaving. Designs and colors have evolved over the centuries, due to outside influences. Yet, the techniques have always remained the same. Weavers combined an individual sense of creativity and innovation with a practical approach to the market, and made textiles that reflected their shifting world. Even today, as designs, colors and materials change, the Navajo aesthetic remains recognizable and continues to produce visually exciting textiles that spring from this rich cultural landscape.

The makers of these textiles created extraordinary complex and exacting designs, often with a whimsical twist. They were woven for sale and trade and the threads contain personal and cultural stories, expressing the lives and land of the Navajo people. We may not know the individual stories of each weaver, but we do know that each one had a story contained within the threads. As weavers, spinners and dyers, we may appreciate the finely spun yarns, the beautifully dyed wool, or pleasing designs. As collectors, we may connect with an object that reminds us of favorites in our collection and of Navajo weavers and artists whom we know. These objects confirm that tradition and culture are not static, but continually transforming, as influences from the outside world bring change and innovation to a textile tradition that has survived despite many challenges. But the life of these weavers cannot be reduced to an object or text on a wall. Each textile reflects the personal and cultural beauty the weaver put into her creation. Each has a life of its own that continues to inspire. What more could a weaver hope for?

Textiles as Material Culture

Monument Valley, AZ, North Window, Navajo Nation. Dry climate preserved much of the fabric artifacts available to researchers today

Textiles are often forgotten or underrepresented in the archaeological record because most do not survive. Only those preserved in dry deserts, salty regions, and peat bogs linger long enough to add to the material culture record that consists mostly of ceramics, metal, and architecture. Cloth became common around 4,000 B.C. and textile production soon became the most important ancient industry (Barber, 21). In the Ancient Andes, cloth was more highly valued than gold or silver, the more hours devoted to production the greater value of the cloth (Murra). Too often textiles are part of a woven history that is ignored or forgotten. Most of us take our textiles for granted since we are so far removed from the production process. But before the Industrial Revolution everyone understood how textiles were made because they saw the making of thread and cloth at home every day. The average person spent more time making cloth than they did on food production. It is easy for us to forget the significant role textiles played in the past and how these artifacts can inform our research.

Contremporary Navajo rug illustrates individual innovation and outside cultural influences

In many cases we choose textiles for exhibition that have no history or only a partial provenance. Museum collections often contain objects with incomplete histories and we must seek out the hidden stories in the cloth. Many Navajo textiles in the exhibition Diamonds, Dreams, Landscapes, had no documentation on the maker. They were collected at a time when knowing the maker was not seen as important or the information was already lost due to trade.

The curatorial approach used for the Navajo textile exhibit was to focus on weaving as a dynamic, living experience that continues to be part of Navajo life. Navajo people and their culture are still vibrant, growing, and changing. The weavers are flexible craftspeople, innovative designers and the determined culture bearers for the Navajo Nation. My work on this exhibition sought to honor the legacy of Joe Ben Wheat’s approach to textile studies and museum stewardship; to use multiple research methods, to search out the lives and stories embedded in these weavings and to remember that a dynamic culture lives at the heart of the exhibition where life and art are intertwined.

by Judy Newland, MA, MS, Contributing Writer

Judy Newland is faculty associate in museum anthropology at Arizona State University and serves as the Director and Curator of Exhibitions for the ASU Museum of Anthropology. She has worked in the museum field for over twelve years at a variety of university museums. She teaches a graduate seminar in Exhibit Design and Development each spring semester. Judy received advanced degrees from at the University of Colorado-Boulder (MS Museum Studies/Anthropology, 2000) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (MA Textile History, 2007). She is a practicing tapestry weaver and her research includes archaeological textile fieldwork and weaving cultural practices around the world. Her research interests also include ancient Andean textiles and the production and meaning of indigo. She has a special interest in weaving in the Southwest.

Learn more at http://asuma.edu  and  http://cumuseum.colorado.edu

Pair, monopodia supported armchairs, likely Irish (Dublin), c. 1810. Gilded wood, modern upholstery; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift, Horace Wood Brock. Photo © MFA, Boston.

  The Regency era in the United Kingdom is the period between 1811 — when King George III was deemed insane and unfit to rule and his son, the Prince of Wales, ruled as his proxy as Prince Regent — and 1820, when the Prince Regent became George IV on the death of his father. The term Regency is therefore used to describe works of art produced in England between the late 1790s until 1837 when Queen Victoria ascended the throne. [1] Fine Arts Magazine  

George IV, while Prince Regent, by Sir Thomas Lawrence(c. 1815)

  Unlike the neoclassical style of the second half of the eighteenth century that drew upon inspiration from ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome, Regency style furniture set out to copy and reproduce ancient forms of decoration. Well-known Regency furniture designers, such as Thomas Hope, James Newton, George Smith, and Henry Holland, borrowed from a wide range of classical sources. From the ancient Roman period, they appropriated symbols such as sphinxes, monopodia, chimera and griffins. Reaching further back still, they also sought inspiration from Egyptian masks. Items were produced for the privileged classes in luxurious materials, with veneers of zebrawood, mahogany and rosewood and were often embellished with and patinated and gilt mounts.  

Figure 2: Tripod table design with monopodia legs, publ. in Household Furniture and Interior Decoration Executed from Design, by Thomas Hope. Reprint of 1807 ed.,1970, plate 32.

 The monopodium, a decorative support consisting of the head and one leg of an animal, often a lion or leopard, was first seen in Roman furniture and was revived during the late eighteenth century by neoclassical designers, such as Thomas Hope in his 1807 publication Household Furniture and Interior Decoration [2] (see Figure 2). The use of these classical design elements helped to establish the ‘English Empire’ element in Regency furniture. [3]  

Antique sources of inspiration were also popular during the mid-eighteenth century and the French archaeologist, draughtsman, and collector Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, comte de Caylus, encouraged interest in the study of classical subjects as a result of his 1752 publication Recueil d’Antiquités Égyptiennes, Étrusques, Grècques, et Romaines completed upon his return to Paris from a study tour of Italy and Greece. Figure 3 illustrates the profile of a Roman monopodium similar to the legs of the MFA chairs and also common in Hope’s designs.  

In 2009, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston acquired a pair of Irish Regency monopodia armchairs owned by the Second Earl of Caledon, Du Pre Alexander, the son of the 1st Earl, James Alexander, who made a tremendous fortune in India. In 1776, James Alexander purchased the Caledon estate in County Tyrone, Ireland from Edmund Boyle, 7th Earl of Cork and Orrery, whose father had acquired it by marriage into the Hamilton family of Caledon in 1738. It is likely that a suite of these chairs were commissioned for Caledon castle. (right) Figure 3: Drawing of a Roman monopodium by A.C.P. Caylus from Recueil d’Antiquités Égyptiennes, Étrusques, Grècques, et Romaines I (1752), pl. XCV, no. II.  

A typical Regency era interior, showing the ample use of red, an influence of China trade.

Although these chairs have not been attributed to a specific designer, design drawings depicting similar panther monopodia were also made by the English architect and designer C.H. Tatham during his Grand Tour to Rome from 1794-1796. He traveled Europe to study classical remains, architecture, and decorative details, a project which architect, Henry Holland, later published as a collection of drawings. [4] As a result of Tatham’s scholarly approach to decorative details, he left his mark on the Regency style by paving the way for a strictly archaeological approach to furniture and design and drove the demand for craftsmen and designers to be well versed in the classical tradition. [5]  

Chairs embodying animal monopodia forming arm supports or, in the case of the MFA pieces, the front legs, were intended to be used primarily in a drawing-room or library. They were often more elaborate than parlor chairs, since they were produced in luxurious materials, such as mahogany, painted or gilded wood. [6]  The MFA chairs are further enhanced by the use of gilt bronze mounts to the top rail, a testament to the importance of the scheme for which they must originally have been commissioned.  

A recent exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts entitled, ‘Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection’ [7] highlighted a selection of the museum’s Regency collection. A future English Regency gallery at the MFA will include many fine works of art of the period.  

by Rebecca Tilles, Contributing Writer  

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[1] Martin P. Levy, “’Of Beauty’: Aspects of the Horace Wood Brock Collection of Decorative Arts,” in Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection (Boston: MFA Publications, 2008), p. 25.  

 [2] Household Furniture and Interior Decoration Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1807).  

 [3] Clifford Musgrave, Regency Furniture, 1800 to 1830 (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 51-52.  

 [4] Ania Buckrell Pos, “Tatham and Italy: Influences on English Neo-Classical Design,” in Furniture History, vol. XXXVIII (2002), p. 58.  

[5] Ibid. p. 58, 60.  

[6] Musgrave, p. 95.  

[7] See the exhibition catalogue Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection (Boston: MFA Publications, 2008).  

Rebecca Tilles is a curatorial research associate in decorative arts and sculpture in the Art of Europe Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and has assisted with the exhibitions “Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815” (2007) and “Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection” (2009). She holds a BA in French and French Cultural Studies from Wellesley College and an MA in European Decorative Arts from The Bard Graduate Center in New York.