Posts Tagged ‘italian antique wall art’

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.

The beginnings of Portuguese faience are obscure, and prior to the 17th century few pieces can be attributed with any certainty. Although written records indicate that there was production from at least the 13th century, evidence is sparse until the 16th century, when there appears to have been a flowering in this craft. In 1552 there were ten potteries in Lisbon alone. It is most likely that the industry was boosted by migrant potters, perhaps from Italy, France, or The Netherlands. While some European-type wares were made, including Italian-Style albarelli and late 19th-century wares in the style of the French potter Bernard Palissy \ (c.1510-90), 10-90), the most
wares were those decorated in the manner of Chinese export porcelain made during the late Ming Dynasty ( 1368-1644), indicating the importance of the
Portuguese trade with China at this time.
Although some of these mainly blue-and-white wares are fairly fine renditions of Chinese porcelain, most have a crowded market-place appeal, with robustly drawn if somewhat garbled motifs in what is known as the “Sinn-Portuguese” style. Motifs include the Fight Precious Things (including the artemisia leaf and the musical stone, which often appear in the broad panelled borders of dishes). With time, these designs became simplified or formalized: Chinese-border sunflowers evolved into spiky demi-lines or a radiating scale pattern; the artemisia leaf began to resemble a spider. The compartmentalized borders taken from kraal: porcelain were retained, although the diverse semi-geometric patterns of the late Ming style were replaced by a simple “cross-stitch” trellis design.
AFTER 1700
During the 18th century Portuguese faience was strongly influenced by  French potteries, especially those in Rouen,    the Portuguese wares were never as meticulously drawn as the French. In general Portuguese faience produced in Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra, and other potteries is very similar in feeling to provincial French faience. Furthermore, there was clearly a reluctance to advance or to experiment with new designs, so wares often seem old-fashioned – the formal Baroque style of early 18th-century Rouen wares is still found in the middle of the century or even later. This time-lag can also be seen on high Rococo faience, the style
being maintained until beyond the end of the 18th century. The most important pottery centres were
given a great incentive in 1770 when
a ban was imposed on all imported porcelain, save that from East Asia, which boosted domestic production.
In the 19th century, in keeping with the European trend, Portuguese potters produced considerable quantities of revival wares, borrowing indiscriminately from the classic wares of Italy, France, and The Netherlands. Among the more frequently encountered types are the lead-glazed wares made in Caldas da Rainha that were based on the wares of Bernard Palissy – dishes or hollow-wares with applied reptiles, covered in dark lead glazes. Nineteenth-century wares were skilfully potted and painted. Much late 19th- and 20th-
century pottery is traditional in feel,
using an Italianate or a debased Ming
export style. In the latter category,
deer and rabbits cavort amid
formal small-scale vegetation,
mostly painted in blue with
brown outlines. This refined
material may have a silky-smooth
glaze of slightly pinkish tone.

•    Body- generally fairly crude; less refined than Spanish
wares
•    GLAZE quite gritty
•    DECORATION usually very  schematic and quickly executed; 17th-century bloc-and-white wares: outlined in manganese brown, based on Chinese late Ming and Transitional porcelain; 18th-century faience: inspired by French faience; 19th-Century wares: inspired by 16th-century Palissy wares
•    FEATURES flatware was generally fired on a triangular
arrangement of pins visible on the underside of the  flangeIMPORTANT
•     CENTRES OF PRODUCTION Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra, Caldas da Rainha
Marks
Before c.177() Portuguese wares were rarely marked
Lisbon: Royal factory of Rato (1767-183.5); mark for wares made under Brunetto (1767
Caldas da Rainha: Mafra factory (est. 1853); Mark for wares made under Manuel Gomel (active 1853-7)