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Article

Aas, Nils  

Ingeborg Wikborg

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(Sigurd)

(b Inderøy, Nord-Trøndelag, April 21, 1933).

Norwegian sculptor, designer and medallist. He became familiar with handicraft in his father’s furniture workshop. In 1954 he began five years’ study as a commercial artist at the Håndverks- og Kunstindustriskole in Oslo and from 1957 to 1963 he worked as an illustrator for a newspaper. He studied at the Kunstakademi in Oslo from 1959 to 1962 under the sculptor Per Palle Storm (1910–94) who advocated naturalism in sculpture. As an assistant to Arnold Haukeland from 1961 to 1964, Aas lost his apprehension of the untried and cultivated his sense of daring, as he gained experience with welding techniques. Highly imaginative and versatile, Aas worked in both abstract and figurative modes and is reckoned one of the foremost sculptors in Norway; in 1990 he was honoured with St Olav.

Aas’s first sculpture was an equestrian monument in snow, made in Inderøy while he was a schoolboy. His first public project was the abstract steel figure ...

Article

Abbotsford period  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Acajou moucheté  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Aegricanes  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Aesthetic Movement  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Term used to describe a movement of the 1870s and 1880s that manifested itself in the fine and decorative arts and architecture in Britain and subsequently in the USA. Reacting to what was seen as evidence of philistinism in art and design, it was characterized by the cult of the beautiful and an emphasis on the sheer pleasure to be derived from it. In painting there was a belief in the autonomy of art, the concept of Art for Art’s Sake, which originated in France as a literary movement and was introduced into Britain around 1860.

The Aesthetic Movement was championed by the writers and critics Walter Pater, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Oscar Wilde. In keeping with Pater’s theories, the artists associated with it painted pictures without narrative or significant subject-matter. Dante Gabriel Rossetti took his inspiration from Venetian art because of its emphasis on colour and the decorative. This resulted in a number of half-length paintings of female figures, such as the ...

Article

Aesthetic Movement in America  

Isabel L. Taube

Publication History:

Published online:
28 May 2015
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Late 19th-century movement in the arts and literature characterized by the pursuit and veneration of beauty and the fostering of close relationships among the fine and applied arts. According to its major proponents, beauty was found in imaginative creations that harmonized colours, forms, and patterns derived from Western and non-Western cultures as well as motifs from nature. The Aesthetic Movement gained momentum in England in the 1850s, achieved widespread popularity in England and the USA by the 1870s, and declined by the 1890s.

The principal ideologies and practices of British Aestheticism came to the USA through both educational and commercial channels. As early as 1873, the Scottish stained-glass designer, decorator, and art dealer Daniel Cottier opened a branch of his interior design shop in New York and played a significant role in introducing aesthetic taste and artefacts to Americans. The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, with its extensive display of industrial and decorative arts, showcased British Aestheticism and the Japanese ceramics that influenced it. British art magazines and books, especially Charles Locke Eastlake’s ...

Article

Affleck, Thomas  

Oscar P. Fitzgerald

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Aberdeen, 1740; d Philadelphia, PA, March 5, 1795).

American cabinetmaker of Scottish birth. He trained as a cabinetmaker in Edinburgh and London. In 1763 he arrived in Philadelphia on the same boat as John Penn, the new Governor of Pennsylvania and a future client, to join Quaker friends. He opened a shop on Union Street and eventually moved to Second Street in the Society Hill area. He made stylish mahogany furniture (sold 1788; e.g. Philadelphia, PA, Cliveden Mus.; armchair, Winterthur, DE, Mus. & Gdns) for the governor’s mansion at Lansdowne, PA, and many of the most prominent families in the city owned his work, including the Mifflins, the Whartons, and the Chew family at Cliveden. The parlour suite he made for John Cadwalader carved by James Reynolds and the firm of Bernard and Jugiez in 1770–71 was among the most elaborate ever produced in the colonies (pole screen, Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.).

A Quaker and Loyalist, Affleck refused to participate in the Revolution (...

Article

Africa: Furniture  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Some African peoples have rich traditions of furniture, almost all of which is made of wood and in the main out of single pieces. While no African household completely lacks furniture of some sort, large wooden objects are, for obvious reasons, scarce among nomadic peoples and in communities where villages are relocated at intervals.

In Africa the stool is the most basic item of furniture. A man’s stool is extremely personal to him, as well as being a status symbol. There are some examples, for example from Liberia, of stools of composite construction made from palm-rib pieces. Generally, however, African stools are made from a section of tree trunk. There is considerable stylistic variation in African stools, both between peoples and between those used by chiefs or elders and those used by commoners. That of an important person may be distinguished by the number of legs, by the elaboration of its carving or by its ornamentation with beadwork, metal plate or brass studs. For example, in northern ...

Article

Albini, Franco  

Andrea Nulli

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Robbiate, Como, Oct 17, 1905; d Milan, Nov 1, 1977).

Italian architect, urban planner and furniture designer. After graduating from the Polytechnic of Milan (1929), he set up individual practice in Milan. One of the group of Rationalist architects who formed around the magazine Casabella, his work in the 1930s ranged from workers’ housing in Milan (1936, 1938; with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti) to an ideal flat and furniture, exhibited at the Triennale in Milan in 1936. Immediately after World War II a series of masterplanning projects included schemes for the City of Milan (1946; with BBPR, Piero Bottoni, Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini) and for Reggio Emilia (1947–8; with Giancarlo De Carlo). Albini’s post-war architecture has a Rationalist clarity combined with sensitivity to context, tradition and history. Expressed first in the Rifugio Pirovano (1949–51) at Cervinia, Aosta, it was the office building for the Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni (INA; 1950), Parma, with its simply stated concrete frame that set the pattern developed later in La Rinascente department store (...

Article

Alchimia  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
11 February 2013
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Alchymia; Studio Alchimia]

Radical Italian design group known as Studio Alchimia founded in Milan in 1976 by the architect Alessandro Guerriero (b 1943) and his sister Adriana; they were later joined by the designer Alessandro Mendini (b 1931), who became the principal spokesman of group. The Studio was a manifestation of the anti-design movement, which sought to subvert austere ...

Article

Alkema, Wobbe  

John Steen

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(Hendrik)

(b Borger, Feb 11, 1900; d Drachten, Jan 30, 1984).

Dutch painter and printmaker. He trained between 1919 and 1923 as a cabinetmaker, taking evening classes in furniture drawing and design at the Academie Minerva in Groningen. He also took private drawing lessons with the Dutch sculptor Willem Valk (1898–1977). Around 1920 he started to make drawings and paintings in an abstracted, geometric style, similar to that of Bart van der Leck (e.g. En passant, 1921–2; priv. col., see 1984 exh. cat., p. 17). From 1924 he worked in the architectural firm of Van Lingen in Groningen, and he continued to design furniture until the 1930s. He joined De Ploeg and started to mix with Dutch artists such as Jan Wiegers, Jan Altink (1885–1971) and Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman. He produced geometric abstract works such as Composition with Yellow Circles (1924; Groningen, Groninger Mus.). From c. 1924 he began to associate with the Belgian Constructivists involved in the magazine ...

Article

Allis family  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

American family of joiners and cabinetmakers, active in Hadfield, MA. The brothers John Allis (1642–91) and Samuel Allis (1647–91), whose maternal great-uncle was Nicholas Disbrowe, were both joiners, as was John’s son Ichabod (1675–1747). The firm was managed by John Allis the elder, and employed his brother and sons; John the elder’s partner was ...

Article

Allison, Michael  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b 1773; d 1855).

American cabinetmaker, active in New York throughout the first half of the 19th century; the principal competitor of his neighbour Duncan Phyfe. Allison’s furniture is characterized by the use of high-quality mahogany and a principled austerity in the use of decoration. His early work is in the Hepplewhite style, and his later work is modelled on Sheraton....

Article

Allwine, Lawrence  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b 1756; d 1833).

American chair-maker, active in Philadelphia, specializing in Windsor chairs, which were painted or gilded. His relatives (possibly sons) John and Peter Allwine were apprenticed to him. The first family workshop opened on South Front Street in 1791, and the last, on Sassafras Street (now Race Street), closed in 1809, when Lawrence and John migrated to Zanesville, in Muskingum County, OH, they continued to make chairs, and also ran a tavern. Lawrence Allwine is the eponym of the varnish known as ‘Allwine Gloss’....

Article

Altdeutsch style  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Amboyna wood  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Ambry  

Gordon Campbell

Publication History:

Published online:
22 October 2008
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Anckerman [Anckermann], Daniel  

Torbjörn Fulton

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Germany, fl 1620–56; d Mecklenburg).

German stuccoist and sculptor. His few surviving works provide fine examples from a period that is sparsely represented in the history of stucco decoration in parts of middle and northern Europe. Anckerman’s first known work is in Mecklenburg, where he decorated the ceilings in the castles of Dargun (destr.) and Güstrow. In the latter a vast expanse of his relief panels (1620) survives, although some of them are 20th-century free reconstructions. His other identified works are in Sweden, where he worked for several patrons, including Queen Christina. In the 1640s he decorated the funerary chapel of General Herman Wrangel (d 1645) in Skokloster (Uppland) parish church. In this tower-like chapel he provided three stucco wall reliefs: the Battle of Gorzno (1629) (depicting the battle in which the Swedes defeated the Poles), a family tree and a decorative landscape. The Gothic vault is decorated with leaves, entwined along the ribs, a central floral motif and four figures of angels, sculpted in such high relief as to seem almost in the round. In addition there are two life-size figures representing General Wrangel, one reposing on the tomb, the other an equestrian monument set against a wall. None of the stucco is painted or gilded, and the effect of so much decoration in a small room is somewhat overcrowded; however, it succeeds in communicating the patron’s martial pride. Although there is no documentation to support identification of Anckerman as the sculptor of these works, the stylistic similarity to the documented ones in Strängnäs Cathedral strongly suggests such an attribution....

Article

Ângelo, António  

Maria Helena Mendes Pinto

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(fl c. 1766; d Lisbon, 1814).

Portuguese wood-carver and cabinetmaker. From 1766 he worked uninterruptedly on commissions from the royal family or under their patronage, even after the court had gone into exile in Brazil in 1807. His name is recorded from 1803 in the book of those receiving communion in Rua S Roque in the Encarnação parish where he, like many other wood-carvers, lived or had his workshop. He was licensed as a wood-carver of the Casa do Infantado and later of the royal palaces (1805). When he applied for the latter qualification, he made a list (possibly chronological) of his works prefaced by the statement: ‘As I show here, I have been serving the royal household for thirty-three years’. This key document in Ângelo’s own hand allows a fuller survey of his work than has previously been feasible (Correira Guedes, 1971). Ângelo worked principally in executing the designs of architects of the royal household or the Casa do Infantado, sometimes on his own with complete freedom and responsibility, as in the construction of the tower for fireworks on the occasion of the inauguration (...

Article

Anhtoni [Anthonij], Giovanni  

Torbjörn Fulton

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Johan]

(fl Narol, 1663; d Stockholm, 1688).

Italian stuccoist active in Sweden. He collaborated with Hans Zauch on ceilings in Skokloster Castle, Uppland (1663–4), and he created the ceiling in the great hall in Djursholm Castle (1668), near Stockholm. At Skokloster he may have executed two ceilings (1663–4) alone, in the antechambers of the apartment of Carl Gustaf Wrangel (1613–76) and his wife in the east wing. These ceilings are dominated by figurative motifs—flying putti in one ceiling, representatives of the Four Seasons in the other. The latter especially is marked by its somewhat naive but fine modelling and has lyrical scenes, such as the heavily clad young man warming his hands by a fire, typifying winter.

E. Andrén: Skokloster (Stockholm, 1948) S. Karling: ‘Les Stucateurs italiens en Suède’, Arte e artisti dei laghi lombardi, ed. E. Aslan (Como, 1964), pp. 291–302 G. Beard: Stucco and Decorative Plasterwork in Europe...