I'll Show You Mine, If You Show Me Yours [Part I]

Wiley Purkey

Well, there's been such a huge response that I'm going to be making this into a series of posts. I'm getting palpitations thinking about all the money I could blow on the books I don't have here. 

Artist Wiley Purkey submitted this great selection. The period in American Art around the 1920s is fascinating to me. Artists reacted in different ways to the mechanization of Industry. Disenchanted by the industrialization of America, the likes of Edward Hopper captured the sense of urban isolation felt by so many. An intensely private man, and a lifelong celibate, he painted this America from the inside. The Regionalists, on the other hand, represented an artistic belief that rural America and back-to-basics labor off the land could replace urbanization and the factory-line. Illustrators Howard Pyle, and his student N.C. Wyeth, espoused a similar (called Brandywine) Romanticism of New England. Burchfield portrayed similarly heightened visions of the American landscape, turning his back on the urban world of his old friend Hopper. Andrew Wyeth was called a 'Regionalist' by his detractors, but he painted a "Pennsylvania [that] seems to groom itself with a cold gray tongue" [source]. This was not quite the Romantic regionalism of his contemporaries. Wyeth's was darker, more private. A rural version of Hopper's urbanity. Impressionists in Winter is, in my opinion, the best of Impressionist art. When the artist's palette is reduced to almost nothing, there's a reliance on composition and value that is almost Japanese at times. Not surprising then to see a copy of Whistler's beautiful Etchings here too.

Book Links: 

The Regionalists, by Nancy Heller

Charles Burchfield

Impressionists in Winter

Andrew Wyeth

James Montgomery Flagg
Maxfield Parrish

Theresa Cheek, of Art's The Answer!

Art's The Answer! is the fantastic blog written by Theresa Cheek, who clearly has a passion for the decorative arts, and for sharing all she comes across. Konemann does a great job of bringing out large format, lavishly photographed, and reasonably priced books on architecture and ornamentation. This is just a tiny selection of Theresa's vast collection on a huge variety of subjects. Be sure to check out her blog. And just peeking in on the far right is a book that's very popular with my West Coast friends, called Ca'toga. It's about the Dali-meets-Baroque-meets-Antiquity estate of Venetian artist Carlo Machiori. I've yet to come across a book dedicated solely to the painted surfaces of Versailles, but I'm sure it's out there. Until then, I love to browse through books such as Splendors of Versailles, for snippets of Oudry's landscapes and Fontenay's flowers and vases. Incredible stuff.

The St. Laurent book is a rare glimpse into the decor stylings of one of the 20th Century's very best designers. Jacques Grange features heavily in the selections, and though the lavishness of the homes becomes makes me feel a bit claustrophobic after a while [I want to run off and live in Wyeth's cabin by the end of the book], it's well worth the investment.

Koneman titles

Ca'toga
The Private World of Yves St. Laurent & Pierre Bergé
Splendors of Versailles

Karen

The 1920s once again putting on a strong show, this time from a European design perspective. Karen of Chicago's Des Travaux sent us this great shot, showing some of the stalwart classics we all know and love, along with some real treasures. Jansen Furniture is a great book about the powerhouse Paris-based design company, who's ebony and ivory geometrical inlay doors are a real treat. I narrowly missed the opportunity to create replicas of those doors once. Jean Dunand is also a master interior designer, and perhaps the greatest lacquer artist of the Art Deco period. I've downloaded any image of his incredible standing screens that I can get my hands on. Paul Poiret is the creator of the most beautiful dresses ever made. Click the link and you'll see what I mean. It's tragic that he was ruined completely by WWI and made bankrupt. As someone who'd backed myself into a rarified corner of decorative painting, I'm all too aware that tough times reveal the precariousness of this business. Elkins, on the other hand, thrived, and by the end of her illustrious career had created a huge number of interiors for the West Coast glitterati. And what I wouldn't give for that copy of Antonio Basoli's stunning designs.

Jansen Furniture

Jean Dunand

Poiret (Rizzoli)

Frances Elkins

Antonio Basoli

Early American Decoration

Chinoiserie (Phaidon)

Art Instruction books that I see on a lot of shelves (including my own):

The Art of Faux (P. Finkelstein)

Handbook of Painted Decoration (Y. Guegan)

Okay, gotta go. Keep sending them in! I'll upload more shots when I have a chance.

Jean-Francois Hache, Marquetry

Time for a little eye candy. After all my inane babbling in the last few posts I think it's time we heard from a Master, and Jean-Francois Hache was one of the greatest craftsmen who ever lived. These images are from a collection of small boxes that he created. I posted a more complete set here. Hache's work was highlighted in the three volume set by Pierre Ramond, Masters of Marquetry.

It's kind of crazy to think that this could ever be considered a 'craft' and not an 'art', but that's evidently the way they thought in those days. You followed in the footsteps of your father, and joined the trade like anyone else.

"The dynasty began with Noël Hache (1630-1675), the son of a master baker who chose not to enter the family business, but rather studied veneering in the workshop of a Calais master. Eventually, Noël set up his own workshop in Toulouse and, upon his death, it was taken over by his son Thomas. Thomas Hache then moved the atêlier to Grenoble. His only son, Pierre, worked with him as did his grandson, Jean-François.

Jean-François Hache (1730-1796) is probably the most famous of the Hache craftsmen. In 1756 he spent some time in Paris where he was very much influenced by the Louis XV style and particularly by the work of Jean-François Oeben. He gradually took the baton at the family workshop and around 1760 began to incorporate more simplified forms and intricate marquetry into his designs.

A strong keynote of Hache’s work is his use of bold and unusual geometric inlaid forms. The distinctive nature of these forms is accentuated by the fact that he placed them within late Louis XV rococo furniture prototypes. The interesting and highly successful tension this created makes Hache’s work unique."

I love the subtle tones, simple geometry & patina of this Hache floor

Our digital line drawing

Asked to produce a Parquet tile based upon one of Hache's designs, we re-drew the geometry (of the floor above) in the computer, then textured it using our collection of digital veneer files. Now it was ready for printing onto our custom 3/4" HDF floor tiles. Here's our rough file layed out like the Hache floor:

Here's a schematic of our 'work in progress' digital Hache floor, on modular 16" HDF tiles (needs aging)

Our (not quite finished) Hache central star quadrant, with digital 'aged patina' added for effect

Modular Ornament, past and future...

 This gorgeous ceiling was created with en feuille printed papers, made by an unknown Parisian manufacturer around 1780. Une feuille de papier literally means a sheet, or piece of paper, and in this context means that the entire design was created by cutting the design from individual sheets of block-printed paper.

The dark and light grounds, the borders of flowers and fruits, the medallions and even the figure of Diana in her chariot were all cut out separately and pasted on the ceiling to create this wonderful image.

This method of creating custom, one-off installations was the best way at the time for clients and designers to bridge the gap between the bespoke mural and the printed image.

Print Rooms, as they became known, were a highly individual way of decorating walls in the eighteenth century. It seems to have been a trend limited in large part to Ireland and England. The charming and whimsical room at Castletown House in Ireland, above, is the work of the lady of the house; fifteen year old bride, Lady Louisa Connolly. That she took great pleasure in her design is evident in the balanced design of octagons, ovals, circles and squares, all embellished with garlands and bows for a fanciful effect.

These days, photocopies and clip art are substituted for the original mezzotints of old. 

But why stop at cutting up scraps of paper?

Along with my business partner Mark, we saw that there was room for much improvement and advancement of the technique. I firmly believe that the artisans of a few centuries ago would have absolutely loved the digital revolution. The means they used were simply a reflection of the limit of the technology they had available at the time, nothing more.

So we developed the idea of modular designs created entirely on computer, then printed out in large sheets as custom installations. Why bother painting 60 rosettes on a frieze around a room when you can paint a single one, scan it into the computer, then print out rolls and rolls of the stuff? I mean; they're all supposed to be identical anyway, right? 

I started developing my own library of hand-painted shapes. These were little individual sections of ornament, painted in black and white, that I then scanned into the computer and colored and jigsawed together at will on my screen. Anyone interested in those early experiments can check out this blog post on the topic.

Instead of the traditional 'cut-and-paste' technique of the Print Rooms, where the jigsawing of images was done by hand and on-site, we did all the jigsawing of our artwork directly on the computer screen. When we liked what we saw, we simply printed it out on rolls up to five feet wide, and pasted it onto the wall.

The experiment was working! 

We decided to take it all a step further; to create artwork entirely on the computer, without any other tool whatsoever. Scanning hundreds of sheets of veneer, we quickly amassed an incredible library of wood textures. Then, using computer software we drew out our designs in the same way any artisan would lay out a design for marquetry: in simple back-and-white line drawings. These drawings were then 'colored' on the computer using our wood texture library, and custom printed onto sheets of Class A fire-retardant wallcovering. 

In the image above, you can see the 'before and after' of the room.

When we got there, every surface was primed white. We started by hand-painting all the raised moldings in traditional faux-bois. This was because our printed sheets of paper would only adhere to flat surfaces. Then we simply pasted our custom printed papers into the panels, and along the stiles and rails to create this stunning look.

This image shows the incredible authenticity of the effect. This is not a photograph: It is a computer rendered design, imitating wood inlay. The wood textures, colors, even the blemishes and worm-holes, are all added in layers to create the effect of marquetry. This piece is then printed out onto any substrate (including plain maple veneer) and applied to your project. Make sense?

We feel as though we are just at the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more we can be doing to push Decorative Arts into the new century. I really hope this might serve as some small inspiration to those artists out there looking for new ways to rejuvenate a (let's face it) pretty antiquated field. 

It's natural, when new technology comes along, to use it to simply re-create the style that came before. But what would happen if we were not limited by staid historic mimicry? What would it even look like if we took this new technology, this digital evolution, and cranked up the ambition to 11? 

Masterpieces of Marquetry

Pierre Ramond wrote a three set volume of books called Masterpieces of Marquetry, published by Getty. It's impossible to overstate the awesomeness of the set. If you can, you should really get your hands on a copy, if only just to pore over the incredible photographs and corresponding pen and ink illustrations. I received these as a gift from a good friend, and have treasured them since.

Here's the product description from the Amazon site:

"Marquetry, also called intarsia or inlay, is the art of creating intricate pictures and designs on furniture by skillfully cutting and fitting together thin pieces of colored wood, horn, metal, shell, and other precious materials. While this highly specialized art has roots in ancient times, it was popularized in the eighteenth century in France and today remains centered in Paris. This three-volume set—originally published in French and now available for the first time in English—is the most comprehensive examination to date of the techniques used by expert marqueters in creating their exquisite masterpieces."

"The first two volumes are detailed studies of the history of the medium from antiquity to the end of the twentieth century, illustrated with examples from the collections of European furniture and decorative arts in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Wallace Collection in London, and the Getty Museum. A final volume presents the masterpieces of some of the greatest cabinetmakers and marqueters in history, including Pierre Golle, André-Charles Boulle, Bernard van Riesenburgh, Jean-Francois Oeben, Jean-Henri Riesener, and Abraham and David Roentgen. Methodically organized and lavishly illustrated, this set is an invaluable resource for art historians, antique collectors, and dealers, as well as contemporary fine furniture makers."

Ramond was born in 1935 in the southern French town of Soreze, near Toulouse. After studying his craft, Ramond moved and set up a studio at his new home in Paris. During this time he began teaching marquetry at l'École Boulle, the prestigious craft school in Paris, and was named Full Professor in 1978. He is now President of the Jury of Marqueters for the contest of the "Meilleurs Ouvriers de France," lecturing and traveling widely to establish schools of marquetry in Montreal and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California.

It's fascinating how symbiotic the historic relationship is between the development of Art and Technology. The one has always informed the other. As far as marquetry is concerned, the taste for more intricate detail and organic shapes required a smaller cutting blade and stronger steel. The call from the ateliers to the toolmakers was clear: "We need better tools."

The same is true today. Even giants like DuPont are working with artists and pushing the boundaries of products such as Corian. I'm getting on to a different topic here, but it's definitely one that I will come back to. We are pioneers!

These gorgeous drawings are a great add-on and study aid to an earlier tutorial I posted detailing how to draw the acanthus.

Maison Jansen

The apartment of Pierre Delbée, the President of Jansen, was home to five incredible inlaid doors. Made of ebony and ivory, each was a surrealistic take on an architectural theme and displayed the incredible artistry of the Jansen atelier. They took three artisans over twenty months to complete.

The original doors were sold at Christie's Monaco in 1999, so I was asked to replicate them. Unfortunately this project never got beyond the design stage. These images are from the book Jansen, published by Acanthus Press. I posted images of all five doors on my Flickr page.

Here is the drawing I did of a section of the door above, and a sample showing the ebony and ivory inlay, with silver areas (yet to be leafed) left light blue.

The Perished Collection, Studio Job

"...The case had its beginning
when I entered into the Art Exhibition.
To buy furniture that was my goal
In the newest, newest style.
There were chairs made out of human bodies
And even out of naked women,
there were books that were tables,
In the place of music stands there were octopuses,
Instead of lamps there were fire tongs,
Instead of footstools there were boa-constrictors,
Over the bookcases scrambled young scamps
And the glasses perched on iron poles.
And that was just exactly what I wanted.
It cost, of course, an ingot of gold,
But then as a reward,
My entire apartment glittered in the newest style..."

Kory Towska

 "We inhabit the space between art and design, function and sculpture - the area where one thing floats into another."

Furniture ensemble exhibited in the Greenwich Village Design Art Gallery, London. Pieces are made from tropical hardwood decorated with inlays depicting animal skeletons. It recalls Art Deco as well as Flemish Art and is proposed as a precious collector's set. The inlays were cut using high-tech lasers and assembled by expert craftsmen.

"We wanted to create a collection that is exclusive for the quality of the materials and techniques; haute couture products that will last at least a hundred years," says Studio Job.

From the book Furnish, describing the work shown here

Studio Job are clearly great designers, and this piece and others by the team of Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel are beautifully constructed heirlooms, but I disagree with the contention that 'high-tech' lasers constitutes haute couture.

I'm for the democratization of Art and the process of making it. The advent of digital technology in general, and CNC technology in this particular case, has given every one of us the possibility to create pieces such as these. Short run and prototype technology is within all our reach.

The Perished Collection is beautiful, and serves as motivation for all artists to think outside the confines of his or her chosen discipline. There are many companies out there that will take your vector drawing and convert it into custom inlay. Pretty much every woodwork or sign shop has a CNC machine, so let's get to work!

Here's a great interview with Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel of Studio Job. I love the freedom with which they approach design. There's a complete lack of creative constraint which is extremely refreshing, and very inspirational. (Thanks Arthur for pointing me towards that).
 

Urbino marquetry panel

Here's a plate from the book 'The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation,' by Luciano Cheles. It shows the South Wall panel elevation of the breathtaking marquetry from  the room (now in the Met) known as the Gubbio studiolo of Urbino.

A masterpiece of inlay, the panels of the Studiolo display the most convincing perspective I've ever seen. Every time I stand in the middle of this small room, I'm stunned at the skillful design, workmanship and (let's face it), the insane amount of time it must have taken just to create the perspective of the imbrocated coin motifs in the borders, let alone the entire room.

This is a drawing that I know you haven't seen before. I drew this myself, based on the panel above. Anyone out there care to use this as a template for marquetry?

I drew my own version of Uccello's polyhedron in perspective, as one of the elements in the cabinet scene below. I did stop short of trying to create the perspective of the borders though, opting instead for more standard ornament. What do you want from me, blood?

I posted a number of really great drawings of this kind of ornament as part of a set of drawings that come from the Pierre Ramond set of volumes called Masterpieces of Marquetry. They're worth taking a look at. Here's a separate article on this blog about Ramond and his work.

 

Here's a nice Flickr set of images of the Urbino room.