In the 19th century Wardour Street (in Soho off Leicester Square) was London’s principal centre for ecclesiastical furnishers and second-rank furniture shops. The heavy Gothic Revival furniture sold in these establishments led to the term being used as a term of abuse both for this furniture and for historical writing in a Gothic idiom....
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Gordon Campbell
Term long used to denote a room (next to the bedroom) in which clothes or armour was kept. By the 19th century it had come to refer to a movable bedroom cupboard fitted with hooks or pegs, or with shelves or trays and drawers; one of the pair of doors with which the wardrobe was closed was often fitted with a mirror on the inside or outside....
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Gordon Campbell
Prominent French furniture company active during the reign of Napoleon III (reg 1852–90). The brothers Jean-Henri-Chrétien and Jean-Henri-Christophe were ébénistes from Hannover who had settled in Paris by 1816; the firm’s most important designer was Henri-Léonard Wassmus, the son of Jean-Henri-Chrétien, who worked in a style indebted to Jean-Henri Riesener. Their best-known furniture is a salon suite commissioned by the Garde Meuble de la Couronne for the château at Compiègne (...
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Colin Cunningham
(b Aigburth, Liverpool, July 19, 1830; d Yattendon, Berks, Aug 22, 1905).
English architect, furniture designer and painter. In financial terms he was probably the most successful architect of the 19th century, and his office, of a dozen or so full-time staff, was able to produce large quantities of high-quality drawings with speed and efficiency. His skill in planning was recognized at an early stage, but appreciation of his stylistic achievement has been slower. He was influenced by Ruskin and A. W. N. Pugin, as well as by the more practical approach of George Gilbert Scott, but he developed his own approach to the composition of forms and a preference for bold simple ornament to match the increasing scale of his buildings. He did not confine himself to a single style but was adept in Gothic and, later, free Renaissance styles, and he developed a preference for the neo-Romanesque. He distinguished between carved or moulded ornament on plain stone and decorative materials such as veined marble, which he generally left unornamented. His concern for hard-wearing surface materials led him to adopt terracotta as a facing material, in which he was both a pioneer and protagonist. His sensitive handling of materials approached the aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement, but he always accepted that building was an industrial process. His buildings are characterized by sound planning and bold and picturesque outline, with particular attention given to the skyline in urban buildings....
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Torbjörn Fulton
(b Breslau [now Wrocław]; fl 1572; d 1603).
Silesian stuccoist and architect, active in Sweden. His earliest work in Sweden was probably the stucco decoration (1572) in the King’s Apartment at Kalmar Castle. This consists of a hunting frieze running round the walls, executed in a somewhat naive manner, and cartouches, strapwork, garlands and caryatid figures on the ceiling of the window embrasures. The decoration survives, though it was coarsely repainted in the 19th century.
Watz was occupied mainly at Uppsala Castle, where from 1573 he worked with the architect Franciscus Parr as a stuccoist. When Parr died, Watz took over as architect until the year of his death. Uppsala Castle was never completed, but both the exterior and the interior were given sumptuous stucco ornament: large-scale figures of angels, niches with shells, strapwork and heraldic devices covered the main façades. The richest stucco, however, must have been inside the chapel, a high room with three aisles, probably with a barrel vault, the walls and vault ornamented with stuccos, standing angels and large-scale reliefs. What survives of the decoration is Mannerist, apparently strongly influenced by patterns corresponding with the engravings (...
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Gordon Campbell
( Karl Emanuel Martin )
(b Berlin, 1889; d 1963).
German designer, active in the USA. He settled in Los Angeles before 1914, when he joined the Barker Brothers Furniture Co., for which he designed popular laminated furniture knocked down for ease of shipping; he also established the ‘Modes and Manner’ shop within the Barker Bros. store. His best-known piece for Barker Brothers is his streamlined ‘Airline’ chair (1934–5), which has a Naugahyde (imitation leather) seat and back and rounded wooden supports. Weber also designed items such as cocktail shakers for Friedman Silver of New York (1928–9) and clocks for Lawson Time Company in Alhambra, CA (1934–5).
Kem Weber: The Moderne in Southern California 1920 through 1941 (exh. cat. by D. Gebhard and H. Von Breton; Santa Barbara, U. CA, A. Gals, 1969) Designing the Moderne: Kem Webber's Bixby House (exh. cat. by K. G. F. Helfrich; Santa Barbara, U. CA, A. Mus., 2001)...Article
Gordon Campbell
(b Tønder, Denmark, April 2, 1914; d 2007).
Danish architect and furniture designer. He trained as a cabinetmaker and subsequently worked as a furniture designer in Arne Jacobsen's architectural practice; in 1943 he established his own design studio. Wegner's furniture draws on the craftsmanship of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Nordic tradition of functionalism, but with a cross-current from Chinese furniture. At the end of the 1940s he designed a series of innovative shell chairs, in wood. His most famous chair is the ‘Round’ chair (1949), a teak, oak and cane dining chair which became the iconic image of Wegner's career and of modern Danish design; its sales in America were boosted by its appearances in the televised debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in the 1963 election campaign. Wegner's other chairs include the ‘Peacock’ (1947), which had a slatted back reminiscent of a peacock's plume, the folding chair (...
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(b Budapest, Oct 29, 1906; d Budapest, July 8, 1965).
Hungarian architect, critic, urban planner and furniture designer . After graduating in 1929 from the Hungarian Palatine Joseph Technical University, Budapest, he joined the Bauhaus in Dessau, where he worked under Hannes Meyer. Weiner attended the CIAM II Congress (1929), Frankfurt, and, convinced that the architect’s mission was to serve and transform society, he followed Meyer and his group to the USSR in 1931. There, as assistant professor at the Technical University, Moscow, he contributed, with Hans Schmidt and Konrad Püschel, to urban planning projects, in particular the underground railway system, Moscow, and the development of the city of Orsk. Weiner left the USSR in 1933, and, after working in Basle from 1934 to 1936, in 1937–8 he was employed by Grete Schütte-Lihotzky (b 1897) in Paris, designing furniture for children. In 1939 he moved to Chile, where he became a professor of architecture (1946–8) at the University of Santiago. In ...
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Daniëlle Grosheide
(b Korschenbroich or Neuwied, 1744; d Paris, June 15, 1820).
French cabinetmaker of German birth. Traditionally believed to have been apprenticed to David Roentgen in Neuwied, by 1777 he was established in the Rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine, in Paris, and on 26 March 1778 he was elected Maître Ebéniste. Specializing in the production of luxury pieces, Weisweiler executed consoles, break-front commodes, secrétaires, work-tables and guéridons of great delicacy and high quality. His furniture was often set with plaques of Sèvres porcelain, panels of pietra dura, Oriental lacquer or gilt-bronze, and occasionally Wedgwood medallions. Most of these materials were provided by the marchand-merciers for whom he worked, especially Dominique Daguerre, who supplied Marie-Antoinette with such pieces as Weisweiler’s elegant work-table (1784; Paris, Louvre). Through Daguerre he also provided furniture for the English Prince Regent (later George IV) for Carlton House, London.
Weisweiler’s furniture is characterized by its clear lines, interlaced stretchers and fluted and tapering supports often ending in short peg-top feet. Also typical is the use of plain veneers, especially mahogany and ebony, rather than pictorial marquetry, and of exquisite gilt-bronze ornaments, some of which have been attributed to ...
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Gordon Campbell
Open-topped dresser made in Wales and the English border counties, especially Shropshire and Staffordshire; it was characteristically used to display lustreware and plate. By the 19th century it had become the most colourful and expressive element in both the rural and urban houses of ordinary people. Generally, in the north and east of Wales, dressers were fitted with cupboard doors on the lower section, while in the south and west, dressers were fully open with an apron....
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Ingeborg Krummer-Schroth
(b Ehrenstetten, Dec 10, 1710; d Freiburg, Aug 1, 1797).
German sculptor, painter, stuccoist and architect . He went to Italy as a journeyman and spent two years (1729–31) in Rome, then six months in Strasbourg. His earliest surviving work is the font at the monastery of St Peter in the Black Forest. From 1735 to 1737 he was in Paris, where he attended and won prizes at the Académie de St Luc. In 1737 he carved the large figures for the high altar of Oberried Monastery, and in 1740 he made eight huge stone figures for the portal (destr. 1768) of the monastery of St Blasien in the Black Forest, and also made models for the stairwell figures. Wentzinger signed the contract for the magnificent tomb of General von Rodt in Freiburg im Breisgau Cathedral in 1743. In 1745 he made a model of the Mount of Olives for the church of St Martin in Staufen (now in Frankfurt am Main, Liebieghaus). For the new building at Schloss Ebnet, near Freiburg, he created the stone relief on the gable, figures representing the seasons in the park and stucco sculptures for the salon, modifying the original plans for the building by decorative embellishments. He also painted the double portrait (...
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Elke Ostländer
(b Prague, Dec 3, 1882; d Bad Ischl, June 13, 1976).
German designer and painter of Czech birth. He studied architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague (1900–01) and the Technische Hochschule in Munich (1901–4), where he gained his preliminary diploma in architecture in 1904. From 1902 to 1905 he also studied drawing and painting at the Lehr- und Versuch-Atelier für Angewandte und Freie Kunst in Munich. After military service he became a tutor there from 1906 onwards; his future wife and constant collaborator in later years, the German printmaker and draughtswoman Herthe Schöpp (1888–1971), was one of his pupils. In 1909 he began working as a designer for numerous firms, including the Behr furniture factory and the Meissen porcelain manufacturers. East-Asian forms characterized many of his furniture designs, but eventually he detached himself from any kind of influence, including rural folk art, and achieved a timelessly classical style of great objectivity, revealed above all in articles for everyday use, such as porcelain, glass and tableware (examples in Munich, Bayer. Nmus., Neue Samml., and Berlin, Tiergarten, Kstgewmus.)...
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William Garner
(fl 1752–61; d Dublin, 1790).
Irish stuccoist. He is a typical example of the many plasterers working in Dublin during the mid-18th century whose work remains largely unidentified. In 1752 he was described as a plasterer when admitted as a freeman of the City of Dublin. In 1756 he was paid £534 for ‘plaistering and stucco’ in the city’s Rotunda Hospital, where it is thought he decorated the staircase ceiling. In 1761 he worked at 9 Cavendish Row and at 4 and 5 Parnell Square, three houses built by Bartholomew Mosse (1712–59), Master Builder of the Rotunda.
West is variously described in legal documents as plasterer, Master Builder and merchant, and it is known that he developed property in Lower Dominick Street, Granby Row, Great Denmark Street and City Quay. He built 20 Lower Dominick Street before 1758, and the ceilings there can be attributed to him. Various motifs in the hall—serrated acanthus in high relief and birds holding flowers—are also to be found in the staircase hall of 56 St Stephen’s Green. This latter work is crowded and crudely modelled, though the ceiling of Lower Dominick Street’s hall is one of the most daringly conceived and freely modelled Rococo ceilings in Dublin. Here, trophies of musical instruments, caryatids and birds standing on pedestals are close in treatment to those in the Rotunda Chapel. At Florence Court, Co. Fermanagh, the dining-room ceiling is similar to that in the back drawing-room of 9 Cavendish Row, with its flat acanthus set within robust rectangular mouldings. Although West is popularly associated with the bird motifs found in Dublin Rococo plasterwork, few are actually to be found in the houses where he is known to have worked. Nothing by West can be dated later than ...
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Edwina Burness
(b New York, Jan 24, 1862; d Pavillon Colombe, nr Paris, Aug 11, 1937).
American writer . She was born into a wealthy New York family and was educated privately; she travelled widely, settling in France in 1907. Her first book was The Decoration of Houses (1898), written in collaboration with the Boston architect Ogden Codman (who had remodelled her home at Newport, RI, in 1893). Their aim was to raise the standard of decoration in modern houses to that of the past through a return to ‘architectural proportion’ and an avoidance of the ‘superficial application of ornament’. Each room should be furnished for comfort and according to its use and should be organically related to the rest of the house and the quality of life to be expressed. The work was successful and influential among both the public and such decorators as Elsie De Wolfe and William Odom. Wharton’s house in Lenox, MA, the Mount, built to her design from 1901...
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Rosamond Allwood
( fl London, 1825–50).
English designer . His influential pattern books reflect styles from the late Regency period to the early Victorian. His designs were executed for a number of important clients, including Queen Victoria (at Osborne House, Isle of Wight), Brownlow Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Exeter, William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, and Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland. Whitaker’s Designs of Cabinet and Upholstery Furniture in the Most Modern Style (London, 1825) contains 50 plates of designs for furniture and curtains. The designs are chiefly in the then current late Grecian manner, with a tendency towards rich ornament. In 1826 he published Practical Carpentry, which cites Thomas Hope as the major furniture reformer of the day, and includes a few Grecian designs. Five Etchings from the Antique (London, 1827) is a book of Classical vase designs. Whitaker’s most important work is the House Furnishing, Decorating and Embellishing Assistant (London, 1847...
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Pat Kirkham
Term that describes both natural and man-made materials used for Basketwork ; in the late 20th century it became almost exclusively associated with furniture. The natural materials, which are still worked mainly by hand, are obtained from the willow family (Salix) and from the trailing, vinelike rattan palm (Calamus and Daemonorops); the hard outer skin of the rattan provides ‘cane’, which is split and used for weaving, while the hard inner core is properly known as ‘reed’, but also called cane. The artificial fibres are made mainly from machine-woven, twisted paper, often stiffened with glue sizing and reinforced with fine metal wire.
Wickerwork is as old as basketmaking, itself one of the oldest known crafts. The materials are inexpensive, pliant and easy to work when wet, and robust structures can be made by interweaving a stout framework of rods or stakes with cane or fresh osier withies. Evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome suggests that in ancient times a wide range of products was made, including seat furniture, footstools, headrests, cradles, coffins, mats, hats, shoes and tea-strainers, as well as an enormous variety of boxes and baskets. In fact, until the 19th century the vast majority of wicker items produced all over the world were non-furniture objects. These have been mainly appreciated by anthropologists and ethnographers: art and design historians, generally speaking, have considered them unworthy of attention because of their humble materials and association with everyday utilities and work. By contrast, the study of wicker furniture is validated because, at the very end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, it became a central concern of avant-garde architects and designers. At that period European design reformers became fascinated by what they considered ethnic craftwork, uncorrupted by the effects of industrialization and supposedly offering pure examples of function determining form. Through their efforts, exhibitions of such work, including a great deal of basketry, regularly toured around art and design institutions in Britain, Austria and Germany in order that designers and manufacturers might better understand the relationship of function and material to form and decoration....
