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Article

Astrology in medieval art  

Sophie Page

Astrology is the art of predicting events on earth as well as human character and disposition from the movements of the planets and fixed stars. Medieval astrology encompassed both general concepts of celestial influence, and the technical art of making predictions with horoscopes, symbolic maps of the heavens at particular moments and places constructed from astronomical information. The scientific foundations of the art were developed in ancient Greece, largely lost in early medieval Europe and recovered by the Latin West from Arabic sources in the 12th and 13th centuries. Late medieval astrological images were successfully Christianized and were adapted to particular contexts, acquired local meanings and changed over time.

Astrology developed into a scientific branch of learning in ancient Greece, but because of the opposition of the Church Fathers it was transmitted to early medieval Europe in only fragmentary form in technically unsophisticated textbooks and popular divinatory genres. Literary and scientific texts provided more general ideas about the nature and attributes of the planets which were influential on later iconography. The first significant astrological images appear in 11th-century illustrated astronomical texts (e.g. London, BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius BV), which were acquired and produced by monasteries to aid with time-keeping and the construction of the Christian calendar....

Article

Baillie Scott, M(ackay) H(ugh)  

James D. Kornwolf

(b Ramsgate, Oct 23, 1865; d Brighton, Feb 10, 1945).

English architect, interior designer, garden designer and writer . He was articled to Charles Davis (1827–1902), City Architect of Bath, from 1886 until 1889 but learnt little and was largely self-taught. In 1889 he started his own practice on the Isle of Man, where he built a number of buildings, including his own Red House, Douglas (1893). He was a leading member of the second-generation Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and was among the first to build on the simpler, more abstract and stylized designs of C. F. A. Voysey, a refinement of the ideas of William Morris, Philip Webb, R. Norman Shaw and others from the period 1860–90. From about 1890 until World War I, the Arts and Crafts Movement, as represented by Baillie Scott, Voysey, C. R. Ashbee, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Parker & Unwin and others, became the most important international force in architecture, interior design, landscape and urban planning. The work of these architects influenced Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann in Austria, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Peter Behrens in Germany, Eliel Saarinen and others in Scandinavia, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Irving Gill, Greene & Greene in the USA....

Article

Berlepsch-Valendas, Hans Eduard von  

Swiss, 19th – 20th century, male.

Active in Germany.

Born 31 December 1849, in St Gall; died 1921, in Planegg.

Architect, painter, decorative designer, theorist. Designs (furniture/fabrics/metal objects/ceramics).

Jugendstil.

From 1868 to 1871 Hans Eduard von Berlepsch-Valendas was a student of architecture with Gottfried Sempers in Zurich. After graduating he abandoned architecture while he was living in Frankfurt, to go and train as a painter in Munich (...

Article

Bridgens, Richard  

Brian Austen

(Hicks)

(b ?Sheffield, 1785; d Port of Spain, Trinidad, Nov 1846).

English sculptor, designer and architect. In 1810 he exhibited at the first Liverpool Academy Exhibition and showed models and drawings there in 1811, 1812 and 1814. These included designs for the restoration of the screen in Sefton church, Merseyside, and for a chimney-piece for Speke Hall, Liverpool, and two drawings of Joseph Ridgway’s house at Ridgmont, Horwich, Lancs. Bridgens designed furniture and furnishings in Gothic and Elizabethan styles for George Bullock. In 1814 he moved to London with Bullock, using his address at 4 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, and prepared designs for Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster (1789–1836) for improvements to Battle Abbey, E. Sussex, and similarly for Sir Walter Scott’s home, Abbotsford House, at Melrose on the Borders. Two chair designs for Battle Abbey were published in Rudolph Ackermann’s Repository of Arts in September 1817, and Bridgens was also involved in the design of chairs supplied to Abbotsford House in ...

Article

Bromberg, Paul  

Monique D. J. M. Teunissen

(b Amsterdam, July 12, 1893; d Amsterdam, May 11, 1949).

Dutch interior designer, furniture designer and writer. He was the son of a furniture dealer and was involved with the profession from an early age. He took lessons with the architect J. L. van Ishoven (1870–1931) and gained work experience in Germany. After operating independently for a few years he became the leading designer of the Amsterdam firm Metz & Co. His work displayed a rational concept of form and became well known through exhibitions and publications. At the firm of Hendrik Pander & Zonen in The Hague, where he was employed from 1924 to 1933, he specialized in using different types of wood that gave his taut, functional, batch-produced furniture a distinctive decorative character. On account of their plastic shapes his designs were considered to be related to those of the Amsterdam school architects. For Bromberg functionalism in interiors was a vital starting-point. He created various model rooms and homes in order to illustrate new ideas about the arrangement of domestic interiors. He also taught and wrote manuals, children’s books and many articles in periodicals and trade journals promoting contemporary applied art. He was particularly active within the Dutch Association of Trade and Industrial Art and the ...

Article

Brown, Richard  

Brian Austen

(fl 1804–45).

English architect, designer and drawing-master. He appears to have had strong connections during his early life with South Devon: his earliest known design, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804, was of a Villa with a Distant View of the Catwater, Plymouth, and other designs (1807–12) also relate to this county. However, Brown may have been living in London during this period as he ran an architectural academy at 4 Wells Street. There the importance of perspective drawing was taught, and in 1815 he published the Principles of Practical Perspective. He also became increasingly interested in furniture design, and in the need for designers in this discipline to master the art of perspective. Drawing is one of the main themes in his work the Rudiments of Drawing Cabinet Furniture (1820), which consists of 24 coloured plates, each accompanied by commentary. The designs are in the Classical style and acknowledge the work of Thomas Hope (ii), George Smith and Charles Percier. Brown also praised the quality of George Bullock’s cabinetmaking, and the plates appear to have been derived from Bullock’s designs. One plate depicts a sofa made in ...

Article

Carrà, Carlo  

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 11 February 1881, in Quargnento (Alessandria); died 13 April 1966, in Milan.

Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, collage artist, engraver (including etching), lithographer, decorative designer, art theorist. Landscapes, landscapes with figures, urban landscapes, seascapes. Frescoes.

Futurism, Pittura Metafiscia (Metaphysical Painting), Novecento Italiano, Magic Realism...

Article

Chenavard, (Claude-)Aimé  

(b Lyon, 1798; d Paris, June 16, 1838).

French painter, designer and interior decorator. Throughout his career he was an advocate of the importance of art and design for industry and manufacture. In 1830 he was appointed adviser to the Sèvres Porcelain Factory by the director Alexandre Brongniart (1770–1847). There Chenavard made cartoons for stained-glass windows, a stoneware ‘Vase de la Renaissance’ shown at the 1833 Sèvres exhibition and designs for the Duc d’Orléans (future King Louis-Philippe), such as a silver-gilt ewer made by M. Durant and shown at the 1834 Paris Exposition Universelle. Chenavard exhibited designs at the Paris Salons of 1827, 1831, 1833 and 1834, among them his Gothic-style designs, in collaboration with Achille Mascret, for the decoration of the chapel at the château of Eu, and his sketches for the restoration of the Théâtre Français and Opéra Comique in Paris. Material by Chenavard is preserved in the Musée National de Céramique at Sèvres and the ...

Article

Davis, Owen William  

(b 1838; d ?London, 1913).

English architect and designer. He studied under the architect James Kellaway Colling (c. 1815–1905), an expert on Gothic architecture, and spent several years as assistant to Matthew Digby Wyatt, who at the time was working on the then India Office (1867–8), Whitehall, London. Davis was a designer of architectural ornament, furniture, wallpaper, textiles, ironwork and ceramics, and in 1870 some of his designs were published in Building News. For James Shoolbred & Co., London (fl 1870–1900s), he designed furniture in the medieval, Jacobean, Stuart, Louis XVI and Japanese styles and in the style of Robert Adam and James Adam, illustrated in the company’s catalogue Designs of Furniture … and Interior Decoration (1876). A selection of furniture designed by Davis and manufactured by Shoolbred was shown at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. In 1885 he published Art and Work, which contains 85 lithographic plates of ornament for marble, stone and terracotta and designs for furniture, ceramics, metalwork and textiles, accompanied by notes on the design sources; among the plates are several after drawings, previously unpublished, by the ...

Article

Dresser, Christopher  

Rosamond Allwood

(b Glasgow, July 4, 1834; d Mulhouse, Alsace, Nov 24, 1904).

Scottish designer, Botanist and writer. He trained at the Government School of Design, Somerset House, London, between 1847 and 1854, during which time he was strongly influenced by the design reform efforts of Henry Cole, Richard Redgrave and Owen Jones. In 1854 he began to lecture at the school on botany and in 1856 supplied a plate illustrating the ‘geometrical arrangement of flowers’ for Jones’s Grammar of Ornament. In 1857 he presented a series of lectures at the Royal Institution entitled ‘On the Relationship of Science to Ornamental Art’, which he followed up in a series of 11 articles in the Art Journal (1857–8) on the similar subject of ‘Botany as Adapted to the Arts and Art-Manufacture’. His first three books were on botanical subjects, and in 1860 he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Jena for his research in this area.

Following the International Exhibition of ...

Article

Edwards, Edward  

Shearer West

(b London, March 7, 1738; d London, Dec 10, 1806).

English painter and writer. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to an upholsterer and drew designs for furniture. He became a student at the Duke of Richmond’s gallery in 1759 and opened a drawing school in Soho. In 1761 he became a student at the St Martin’s Lane Academy. He was one of the first students to enrol in the Royal Academy Schools in 1769. He travelled to Italy in c. 1774–6 at the expense of Robert Udney. He exhibited frequently at the Society of Artists, the Free Society and the Royal Academy between 1771 and 1806. His works included biblical and literary subjects such as a scene from the Two Gentlemen of Verona (1799; sold London, at Boydell sale, Christie’s, 17–20 May 1805) painted for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, portraits, and landscapes such as Durham Cathedral (1788; London, V&A).

Edwards was made ARA in ...

Article

Guckeisen, Jakob  

Kai Budde

(b Cologne; fl Strasbourg, 1590s).

German cabinetmaker, writer and engraver. He is recorded as a cabinetmaker and citizen of Strasbourg from 1596. He appears to have been a pupil of the architect Johann Schoch, who designed Schloss Gottesau, near Karlsruhe (c. 1587), and the Friedrichsbau of the Heidelberg Schloss (c. 1601–7). Guckeisen, in collaboration with Veit Eck (fl Strasbourg, 1587), wrote a Kunstbüchlein (Strasbourg, 1596) dedicated to masons and cabinetmakers. He also wrote a similar work, Etlicher Architectischer Portalen, Epitapien, Caminen Und Schweyffen, published in the same year in Cologne. They were followed in 1599 by a series of engraved designs for six chests, also published in Cologne. In collaboration with the cabinetmaker and etcher Hans Jakob Ebelmann, Guckeisen also produced the Schränke (1598), Seilenbuch (1598), Architectura Kunstbuch Darinnen Alerhand Portalen Reisbetten Undt Epitaphien (1599) and Schweyfbuch (1599), the last dedicated to the cabinetmaker Jacob Riedel in Strasbourg. As a designer of ornament, Guckeisen was familiar with the whole repertory of Renaissance decoration, using it in varied combinations....

Article

Guilmard, Désiré  

Sarah Medlam

(fl 1839; d Paris, c. 1889).

French publisher and furniture designer. He was an important disseminator of historical and contemporary designs in 19th-century France. After 1839 he published a constant stream of lithograph designs for furniture, both his own designs and illustrations of the products of commercial firms, which provide an important source for the study of furniture of the period. His chief work was the journal Le Garde-meuble ancien et moderne, which he edited from 1844 to 1882. After 1846 he also published a supplement, L’Ameublement et l’utilité, which soon merged with the parent publication: lithographic designs of seat furniture, case furniture and hangings were reproduced, aimed at both tradesmen and clients. The plates also include general views of interiors and plans of furniture layouts, which give a comprehensive view of the development of styles. Guilmard produced albums recording the furniture shown at the Expositions Universelles of 1844, 1849 and 1855 in Paris and a long series of albums showing designs for particular types of furniture, woodwork fittings or upholstery. He was an important figure in the developing study of historical ornament and design: as early as ...

Article

Haller, Fritz  

Roman Hollenstein

(b Solothurn, Oct 23, 1924).

Swiss architect, theorist, designer and teacher. He established an independent practice in Solothurn in 1949. His early work, including schools, service, industrial and residential buildings, was designed on the basis of a free geometrical grid. From the early 1960s he introduced his own version of a construction system of modular blocks. Notable examples are the Sparkasse (1963), Kriegstetter, and the Höhere Technische Lehranstalt, Windisch, which consist of cubic blocks of glass and steel, with careful proportioning and detailing that reflect his study of Mies van der Rohe. The three steel building systems developed by Haller, differentiated as Mini, Midi and Maxi, are employed in several houses in the form of crystalline prisms and in the SBB-Ausbildungszentrum (1979–82) in Murten, which consists of integrated units set in parkland. Haller was also active in the field of research, developing quasi-utopian urban projects and the highly regarded USM Haller system of office and domestic furniture, which reflected his unitary conception of the architect as a planner, designer and engineer. Haller’s position as an exponent of a school characterized by a cool, technical perfection, seemingly opposed to nature, made him an influential figure in post-war Swiss modernism. He was the leader of the independent ...

Article

Heal, Sir Ambrose  

Margaret Wagstaff

(b London, Sept 3, 1872; d Knotty Green, Bucks, Nov 15, 1959).

English furniture designer and writer. He was educated at Marlborough College and the Slade School of Art, London, before following an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker from 1890 to 1893, when he joined the family firm, Heal & Son, established in 1810 in London by John Harris Heal (d 1833). By 1897 furniture was produced to his designs; in 1898 he became a partner, and his first catalogue, Plain Oak Furniture, was issued, which, like Simple Bedroom Furniture (1899), contains designs in a simple Arts and Crafts style. Heal exhibited regularly at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London. His influence was evident in the catalogues and advertising of the firm (he had an enduring interest in typography), whose design policy he increasingly directed. In 1907 he was appointed Managing Director and in 1913 chairman. His inexpensive, stylish furniture was appropriate to the new garden-city developments, and in ...

Article

Hepplewhite, George  

James Yorke

(d London, ?June 1786).

English furniture designer. Though a household name in the context of late 18th-century furniture, he remains a shadowy figure. Lowndes’s London Directory of 1786 records his business at Redcross Street, Cripplegate, London, and after his death the administration was granted to his widow, Alice, on 27 June 1786. The Public Ledger of 10 October 1786 announced an auction of his stock-in-trade and household furniture. In 1788 his widow published the Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer’s Guide. Its aim was ‘to follow the latest and most prevailing fashion’ and to adhere ‘to such articles only as are of general use’. The intended public included both the cabinetmaker or upholsterer and the client (the ‘mechanic and gentleman’, as Alice Hepplewhite put it). There followed a slightly revised edition in 1789 and an ‘improved’ one in 1794, with an extra plate and revised chair designs. Six engravings bearing Hepplewhite’s name appeared in Thomas Shearer’s Cabinet-makers’ London Book of Prices...

Article

Hoffman, Friedrich Gottlob  

Christopher Gilbert

(b Belgern, nr Leipzig, 1741; d c. 1806).

German cabinetmaker. By 1770 he was established as a master cabinetmaker in Leipzig. An important early patron was the art dealer Karl Christian Heinrich Rost (1742–98), who commissioned furniture closely based on French and English models. In 1788 Hoffman obtained a loan to extend his business in Leipzig and a subsidiary workshop at Eilenburg; his total workforce was 16 tradesmen. In 1789, after a dispute with the local guild of cabinetmakers, he published his first pattern book, Abbildungen der vornehmsten Tischlerarbeiten, welche verfertiget und zu haben sind bey Friedrich Gottlob Hoffmann, wohnhaft auf dem alten Neumarkt in Leipzig, an anthology of designs for household furniture, mostly inspired by the Louis XVI Neo-classical style. In 1795 he produced a second catalogue, Neues Verzeichnis und Muster-Charte des Meubles-Magazin, in which English design types are dominant. A number of pieces corresponding to plates in these two pattern books have been identified (e.g. sofa, ...

Article

Ince & Mayhew  

James Yorke

[Mayhew and Ince]

English partnership of cabinetmakers formed in 1758 by William Ince (b ?London, c. 1738; d London, 6 Jan 1804) and John Mayhew (b 1736; d London, May 1811). Ince was apprenticed to John West (fl 1743–58) of Covent Garden, London, from 1752 until West’s death. As the usual age to begin an apprenticeship was 14, he was probably born towards the end of the 1730s. In 1758 Ince formed a partnership with Mayhew. They operated from Broad Street, Carnaby Market, an address formerly occupied by Charles Smith (fl 1746–59), whose premises they had purchased. In Mortimer’s Universal Director (1763) they were described as ‘cabinet-makers, carvers and upholders’, and by 1778 they were styling themselves ‘manufacturers of plate glass’ (Ince’s father and brother were glass-grinders).

In 1759 the partners began to issue in serial form The Universal System of Household Furniture...

Article

Indau, Johann  

Hans H. Aurenhammer

(b 1651; d Vienna, Feb 7, 1690).

German cabinetmaker and architectural theorist, active in Austria. Probably a native of south Germany, he travelled in Germany and Italy and is recorded in Vienna from 1682. After 1684 he became cabinetmaker to Eleanor Gonzaga (1628–86), widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (reg 1637–57). After her death he was emancipated from guild restrictions.

Indau is known only through his publications. His main work, Wiennerisches Architectur-Kunst und Säulen-Buch (Vienna, 1686), is the first treatise on architectural theory published in Austria. Addressed not only to architects, masons and builders but also to carpenters and painters, it follows the tradition of the German Säulenbücher of the late 16th century and the 17th as a textbook on the five Classical orders of architecture, with 14 illustrations engraved by Elias Nessenthaler (1664–1714) accompanied by a brief text.

Instead of applying the proportions laid down by Sebastiano Serlio’s ...

Article

Jones, Owen  

Michael Darby

(b London, Feb 15, 1809; d London, April 19, 1874).

English architect and designer. The son of a Welsh antiquary and furrier of the same name, Owen Jones was educated at Charterhouse School, London, before becoming a pupil of the architect Lewis Vuillamy (1791–1871). Following his apprenticeship he set out in 1832 for the Continent on a Grand Tour. In Greece Jones met Jules Goury (1803–34), a young French architect; both travellers had become fascinated by Classical architectural polychromy. In order to pursue this study further they visited Egypt, Turkey and Spain, where they undertook a detailed survey of the Alhambra. After Goury died of cholera in 1834, Jones completed their research, finally printing and publishing it himself as Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra (2 vols; London, 1842–5). His initial publication of the work in 1836–7 was never completed, but the three numbers that appeared (out of ten planned) were the first examples of ...