Posts Tagged ‘ironstone china japan pattern’

19 Century British Exoticism Style Furniture.

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

EARLY 19TH CENTURY
BRITISH EXOTICISM
A RICH MIX OF BOTH FOREIGN AND HOME-GROWN INFLUENCES AFFECTED THE DESIGN OF BRITISH FURNITURE DURING THE REGENCY PERIOD.
FROM MOGUL DOMES to Islamic arches, Regency designers drew on a wide variety of exotic sources. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in July 1798, his invasion force included not only soldiers, but artists and poets, botanists, zoologists, and cartographers. The ensuing publication of Descriptions de I’Egypt established a vogue in France for all things Egyptian.
ANCIENT EGYPT
The Egyptian craze surfaced in Britain following Nelson’s subsequent defeat of Napoleon in 1798 at the Battle of the Nile. Sphinx heads appeared on the pilasters of bookcases and side cabinets and lotus leaves were carved on chair splats and printed on textiles and wallpaper designs.
Thomas Hope designed furniture based on the engravings of the French Egyptologist, Baron Denon, and Thomas Chippendale the Younger, who had inherited his father’s famous workshop, created a suite of furniture for Stourhead in 1805, resplendent with sphinx masks. These pieces were made in mahogany, but the foreign motifs of the period were often complemented by the use of highly polished, unusual, imported timbers: streaky salamander, dark ebony, or flecked amboyna.
CHINOISERIE REVIVAL
An integral part of the Rococo repertoire in Britain during the mid 18th century, Chinoiserie enjoyed a revival in the early 19th century. The Royal architect,
A DWARF GOTHIC CABINET
This lacquered cabinet has a crenellated
Lipper section with octagonal corner
towers. A deeper base with a pierced
quatrefoil gallery sits above a pair of
tracery panelled doors flanked by
clasping buttresses. The cabinet
stands on a plinth base. Early 19th
century.
REGENCY TORCHERE STAND This stand is made, of bronzed and gilded wood. Below the top is a guilloche moulded frieze and three gilt supports, with lion masks, joined by Cross supports with applied rosettes. The concave base rests on gilt paw feet.
A CHINESE EXPORT BUREAU This bureau has u fall front above three drawers, a shaped apron, and is raised on cabriole legs. All the surfaces are black and gilt lacquered with lake scenery and flowers.
19th century.
Henry Holland. was profoundly influenced by Sir
George Stauntons An Authentic Account of an Embassy
“M the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China n 1797: and interest in the Far East increased after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, when further British envoys ere sent to the new emperor of China, Chia-Ch’ing.
Furniture was japanned black with gilt to simulate lacquer – as in the late 17th century – while lacquer cabinets (or lacquer panels reused from early screens) were incorporated into British cabinet work. Oriental bamboo was also echoed in the ring turnings on late Regency chairs. Many pieces of furniture were made out of genuine bamboo, while others were turned
and painted to simulate it.
The Prince Regent gave the royal seal of approval to this trend when he furnished several rooms at the Brighton Pavilion with bamboo furniture imported from China. Indeed, this architectural folly became the most famous mixing pot of all the exotic styles of the Regency period.
Western styles of lacquer and bamboo furniture were also imported from Canton. The trade in goods from China to Britain had been established since the early 17th century, but the scale of Chinese imports in the 19th century was unprecedented. As well as imported, Chinoiserie-style furniture, Oriental motifs such as dragons appeared on the crestings of convex mirrors, while latticework and Chinese panelling were applied to chair backs, commode friezes, or brass grills on side cabinets or chiffoniers.
STYLES FROM THE SUBCONTINENT
India, as well as China, influenced the decoration of the Brighton Pavilion. Nash was inspired by William and Thomas Daniell’s book, Oriental Scenery, and included pierced screens, copied from Indian jails (perforated stone screens from Madhya Pradesh), in his designs. The interest in India manifested itself more in the importation of Western-style furniture, than in the application of Indian motifs to British furniture. Exotic ivory-inlaid rosewood furniture and boxes came from Vizagapatam, and ebony chairs of Regency form were shipped from Ceylon.
HISTORICISM
Towards the end of the Regency period, designers and furniture-makers turned away from exoticism and towards their own traditions for inspiration. The Napoleonic wars and their subsequent victories spawned a surge in nationalist feeling. This, along with the historic novels of Walter Scott, inspired designers such as George Bullock and Richard Bridgens to include Elizabethan and Jacobean motifs in furniture for Abbotsford and Aston Hall in the late 1810s and early 1820s. Gothic motifs were always prevalent, particularly as tracery in glazing bars and in panels for cabinet doors. Pointed arches appeared as early as 1807 in the backs of hall chairs published by George Smith. This furniture, often commissioned by a new breed of antiquarian collectors such as William Beckford, was usually made in oak or other native timbers.

Antique Tiles

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

The use of tiles as an architectural element, either as roofing or as decoration for walls, floors, or ceilings, has been a feature of most cultures. In the Middle East, glazed tiles have had a long tradition
in creating cool interiors. After the death of Muhammad (AD 632), the culture of Islam expanded rapidly throughout the region, spreading Islamic philosophy and arts. In Iberia, the westernmost outpost of the Islamic world, this influence is particularly evident in such building, as the Alhambra in Granada.
EUROPE
In Italy tin-glazed earthenware reached new heights in the late-15th and 16th centuries, and Italian tiles were first used for pavements in churches. Migrating potters transmitted their skills from Italy to France
and The Netherlands, and the tin-glazed tiling tradition continued from its epicentre in Antwerp (now in Belgium). In order to escape persecution by their Spanish overlords in the 1560s, many potters fled Antwerp for Rotterdam, Middelburg, Amsterdam, and Delft in the northern Netherlands. By the 1660s and 1670s Dutch potters had adopted a sober blue-and-white palette depicting local interests and activities. In Germany, and many other northern and central European countries, decorative tiles, mostly moulded in relief and covered in either a brown or a green monochrome glaze, were used mainly for cladding the exteriors of stoves.
From the 16th century until the latter half of the
18th century, when they went out of fashion, tin-glazed riles were made in large quantities in Britain. The range and variety of British tiles is great and offers the collector a fertile hunting-ground. From the late 18th century until the latter half of the 19th, decorative tileworks formed little or no part of Western interiors, but after the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, tiles began to reappear, mainly as fire surrounds but sometimes used either as a tile picture or as a series of repeated patterns creating an exotic interior. Both Minton & Co. (est. 1798) and the designer William De Morgan (1839-1917) embraced the Aesthetic Movement and designed tiles
in Japanese, Turkish, and Persian styles. Although a few were hand-painted, the majority were transfer-printed.
NORTH AMERICA
Tiles were manufactured in North America from the second half of the 19th century. By the mid-1870s such firms as the American Encaustic Tiling Co. (est. 1875) in Zanesville, Ohio, and the Star Encaustic Tile Co. (est. 1876) in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, were making mosaic and inlaid floor-tiles. The Low Art Tile Co. (1877-93) in Chelsea, Massachusetts, produced glazed relief tiles that could compete with the best English tiles. At the Grueby Pottery (est. 1894) in Boston, Massachusetts, a variety of tiles in soft colours with matt glazes was made. Other factories making art tiles included the Trent Tile Co. (est. 1882) in Trenton, New Jersey, and the Rookwood Pottery (est.. 1880) in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• early tiles tend to be much thicker than the usual 6mm (approx.) of 18th- and 19th-century tiles; sizes became more uniform in the 19th century
• REPRODUCTIONS collectors should beware of reproduction transfer-printed tiles made in the late 1980s and 1990s
• COLLECTING tiles from Victorian fireplaces arc available in large numbers; Dutch tiles can be expensive; tile panels and pictures are rare and are usually very expensive; Iznik tiles are among the most expensive tiles available and can measure about 38cm ( 15in) in width

About

Friday, May 1st, 2009