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(b Fort Plain, NY, Oct 27, 1925; d San Francisco, 2006).

American tapestry artist, painter and stained-glass designer. Adams studied painting at Syracuse University and with Hans Hoffmann in New York, where he was influenced by the medieval tapestries in the Cloisters and also by the work of Matisse. In the 1950s Adams was apprenticed to the influential French tapestry designer Jean Lurçat, from whom he learnt the bold colours and clear imagery that characterize his work. He also studied at the Ecole Nationale d’Art Décoratif in Aubusson before beginning to use a series of workshops, notably that of Marguerite and Paul Avignon, who wove his first nationally acclaimed tapestry, Phoenix and the Golden Gate (1957). Flight of Angels (1962) was exhibited at the first Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie in Lausanne. In 1976 his cartoon of California Poppies (San Francisco, CA Pal. Legion of Honor) was woven for the Five Centuries of Tapestry exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, as a demonstration piece. Later tapestries, for example ...

(b Jan 25, 1930; d Lomé, Jan 4, 2010).

Togolese painter, sculptor, engraver, stained glass designer, potter and textile designer. Beginning in 1946, he received his secondary education in Dakar, where he also worked in an architecture firm. He travelled to France and received his diplôme supérieur from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. A versatile artist, Ahyi is best known for his murals and for monumental stone, marble and cement public sculptures. His work reflects the fusion of his Togolese roots, European training and an international outlook, and he counts among his influences Moore, Braque, Modigliani, Tamayo, Siqueiros and Tall. His work combines ancient and modern themes and materials, maternity being a prominent topic. The messages of his larger, public pieces operate on a broad level to appeal to the general populace, while smaller works often reflect his private engagement with challenges confronting the human condition. His compositions are both abstract and figurative and evoke the heroism and hope of the two world wars, Togo's colonial period and the struggle for independence from France, as well as the political efforts of the peoples of Vietnam, South Africa and Palestine. Ahyi has won numerous international prizes, including the prize of the city of Lyon (...

(b ?Milan, 1527; d Milan, July 11, 1593).

Italian painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer, active also in Austria and Bohemia. He came from a distinguished Milanese family that included a number of archbishops of the city; his father was the painter Biagio Arcimboldo. Giuseppe is first documented in 1549, working with his father for Milan Cathedral; he received payments until 1558 for supplying paintings, designs for an altar baldacchino and stained-glass windows for the cathedral: the Story of Lot and the Life of St Catherine in the south transept windows are usually attributed to him. He collaborated with Giuseppe Meda in designing the gonfalone of St Ambrose in Milan, probably sometime soon after 1558. In 1556 he received a commission to paint the south wall and vault of the south transept of Monza Cathedral, also in Lombardy, a work that must have been completed by 1562. Portions of a fresco of the Tree of Jesse on the south wall there can be attributed to him. In ...

Descriptive term applied to a style of decorative arts that was widely disseminated in Europe and the USA during the 1920s and 1930s. Derived from the style made popular by the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, the term has been used only since the late 1960s, when there was a revival of interest in the decorative arts of the early 20th century. Since then the term ‘Art Deco’ has been applied to a wide variety of works produced during the inter-war years, and even to those of the German Bauhaus. But Art Deco was essentially of French origin, and the term should, therefore, be applied only to French works and those from countries directly influenced by France.

The development of the Art Deco style, or the Style moderne as it was called at the time, closely paralleled the initiation of the 1925...

[Fr.: ‘new art’]

Decorative style of the late 19th century and the early 20th that flourished principally in Europe and the USA. Although it influenced painting and sculpture, its chief manifestations were in architecture and the decorative and graphic arts, the aspects on which this survey concentrates. It is characterized by sinuous, asymmetrical lines based on organic forms; in a broader sense it encompasses the geometrical and more abstract patterns and rhythms that were evolved as part of the general reaction to 19th-century historicism. There are wide variations in the style according to where it appeared and the materials that were employed.

Art Nouveau has been held to have had its beginnings in 1894 or 1895. A more appropriate date would be 1884, the year the progressive group Les XX was founded in Belgium, and the term was used in the periodical that supported it, Art Moderne: ‘we are believers in Art Nouveau’. The origin of the name is usually attributed to ...

Informal movement in architecture and the decorative arts that championed the unity of the arts, the experience of the individual craftsman, and the qualities of materials and construction in the work itself.

The Arts and Crafts Movement developed in the second half of the 19th century and lasted well into the 20th, drawing its support from progressive artists, architects and designers, philanthropists, amateurs, and middle-class women seeking work in the home. They set up small workshops apart from the world of industry, revived old techniques, and revered the humble household objects of pre-industrial times. The movement was strongest in the industrializing countries of northern Europe and in the USA, and it can best be understood as an unfocused reaction against industrialization. Although quixotic in its anti-industrialism, it was not unique; indeed it was only one among several late 19th-century reform movements, such as the Garden City movement, vegetarianism, and folksong revivals, that set the Romantic values of nature and folk culture against the artificiality of modern life....

Metal knob or boss used for decoration on a book or harness. The term can also denote a bull’s eye in glass and (in early modern English) trunk-hose that is puffed out at the top. It is also used to describe a heavy textile fringe in curtains, pelmets and the top covers of seat furniture....

(Coley)

(b Birmingham, Aug 28, 1833; d London, June 17, 1898).

English painter and decorative artist. He was the leading figure in the second phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His paintings of subjects from medieval legend and Classical mythology and his designs for stained glass, tapestry and many other media played an important part in the Aesthetic Movement and the history of international Symbolism.

He was the only surviving child of Edward Richard Jones, who ran a small carving and gilding business in the centre of Birmingham, and Elizabeth Coley, the daughter of a prosperous jeweller. Christened Edward Coley Burne Jones, he was called simply Edward Jones until c. 1860 when he adopted the surname Burne-Jones. From an early age he drew prolifically but with little guidance and no intention of becoming an artist. In 1844 he entered the local grammar school, King Edward’s, destined for a career in engineering. It was probably in this connection that in 1848 he attended evening classes at the Birmingham School of Design. By the time he left school in ...

(b Flensburg, March 6, 1866; d Wiesbaden, Jan 5, 1945).

German designer. After an early career as an interior designer he turned to the design of tapestries (subsequently woven at the Scherbeker Kunstgewerbeschule), porcelain (table wares), drinking glasses (for the Theresienthaler Kristallglasfabrik) and silver cutlery. After 1914 he worked primarily as a painter and writer.

(b Aelst [now Aalst], Aug 14, 1502; d Brussels, Dec 6, 1550).

South Netherlandish painter, sculptor, architect and designer of woodcuts, stained glass and tapestries. Son of the Deputy Mayor of the village of Aelst, he was married twice, first to Anna van Dornicke (d 1529), the daughter of the Antwerp painter Jan Mertens, who may have been his teacher; they had two children, Michel van Coecke and Pieter van Coecke II (before 1527–59), the latter of whom became a painter. He later married Mayken Verhulst, herself a painter of miniatures and the mother of three children, Pauwel, Katelijne and Maria; they are shown with their parents in Coecke’s Family Portrait (Zurich, Ksthaus). Mayken is credited with having taught the technique of painting in tempera on cloth to her son-in-law, Pieter Bruegel the elder, who married Maria in 1563. (For family tree see Bruegel family.) Van Mander also stated that Bruegel was Coecke’s apprentice, an allegation no longer universally accepted in view of their substantial stylistic differences. Although the names of other students of Coecke’s, including ...

Dutch family of artists. With a striking, personal style that sets him apart from his contemporaries, Dirck Crabeth was the most important Dutch stained-glass artist of the 16th century. His younger brother Wouter Crabeth (stained glass designer) was a less individual designer, whose work has a pleasant spaciousness, but the rendering of detail is not always satisfactory. The impressive windows (1555–71) of the St Janskerk, Gouda, executed largely by the Crabeth brothers, constitute one of the highpoints of Dutch art of that period. Their father was the glass painter Pieter Dircksz., nicknamed Crepel Pier. Van Mander devoted a few lines to Adriaen Pietersz. Crabeth (d 1553), apparently the eldest son and a painter who has so far remained obscure and is said to have been apprenticed to Jan Swart. Wouter Crabeth’s son, Pieter (Woutersz.) Crabeth, fulfilled many important political functions in Gouda, including that of burgomaster. Pieter’s son ...

(Pietersz.)

(fl Gouda, 1539; d Gouda, 1574).

Dutch stained-glass and tapestry designer and cartographer. He is first mentioned in 1539 in connection with a window design commissioned by Count Floris van Egmond (1469–1539) for the Catherijnekerk in Utrecht. A drawing, the Adoration of the Magi (Haarlem, Teylers Mus.), which must be dated very early on stylistic grounds, makes it clear that Dirck had studied the work of Jan van Scorel in Utrecht. The same drawing also reveals how strongly the young artist was influenced by Jan Swart. Dirck’s first important work is a group of stained-glass windows (1543; Paris, Mus. A. Déc.) for the cross-windows in the house of the Leiden bailiff Adriaen Dircksz. van Crimpen. The small scenes, framed by imaginary architecture, depict scenes from the Lives of the Prophet Samuel and the Apostle Paul and are stylistically so close to the work of Jan Swart that personal contact between the two artists can be assumed. The frames, unusual in the decorative arts of that time, demonstrate Crabeth’s qualities as a designer of ornament. Judging from a number of preparatory drawings and a few small panes, mostly executed by others after his designs, Dirck must have designed other small stained-glass windows later in his career. A series of interesting allegories, made presumably in the early 1550s and including the ...

[crazing]

Patterns of small cracks produced intentionally as a decorative effect in glazes, particuarly on ceramics; the term ‘crazing’ is sometimes used to denote unintended crackle, but is also used to denote crackle that is deliberate. Crackle first emerged as a decorative feature in the Guan and Ru wares of the Song dynasty. Crackled glazes in Chinese pottery first became fashionable in Europe in 18th-century France, but were not used in European and American pottery and porcelain until the late 19th century; one of the pioneers was Hugh Cornwall Robertson, whose glazes in the late 1880s included a crackled apple-green turquoise. In 1895 a new pottery was established in Dedham, MA, using Robertson’s distinctive crackled glaze for dinnerware, decorated in cobalt blue with stylized flowers and animals. In Demark, the Kongelige Porcelainsfabrik began experimenting with crackled glazes c. 1904.

Crackle has also been used to decorate glass. The techniques for producing crackle glass (also known as ‘ice glass’) were developed in Venice in the 16th century. In the late 19th century ...

(b Peckham Rye, London, Jan 29, 1845; d London, April 18, 1910).

English designer and writer. He was educated in France and Germany, but his interest in design was provided by visits to the South Kensington Museum, London (now the Victoria & Albert Museum). In 1865 he entered the office of Lavers & Barraud, glass painters and designers. Some time later he became keeper of cartoons at Clayton & Bell and by 1870 had joined Heaton, Butler & Bayne, for whom he worked on the decoration of Eaton Hall, Ches. In late 1880 Day started his own business designing textiles, wallpapers, stained glass, embroidery, carpets, tiles, pottery, furniture, silver, jewellery and book covers. He designed tiles for Maw & Co. and Pilkington’s Tile and Pottery Co., stained glass and wallpaper for W. B. Simpson & Co., wallpapers for Jeffrey & Co. and textiles for Turnbull & Stockdale where he was made Art Director in 1881.

Day was a founder-member and Secretary of the ...

(b ’s Hertogenbosch, bapt May 9, 1596; d Antwerp, Dec 31, 1675).

Flemish glass-painter, draughtsman, painter and tapestry designer. His reputation rests primarily on his drawings and oil sketches, of which several hundred survive, intended mainly as designs for stained-glass windows and prints. He was strongly influenced by the work of other important Flemish artists of the late 16th century and early 17th, notably Rubens, whose motifs and stylistic elements he frequently reworked in his own compositions.

He was the son of the glass painter Jan (Roelofsz.) van Diepenbeeck (d 1619) and first acquired the skills of his trade in his father’s workshop in ’s Hertogenbosch. In 1622–3 he became a master glass painter in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp; it is possible that his move from ’s Hertogenbosch in 1621 was related to the war negotiations that were underway that year, which particularly threatened the northern border provinces of the southern Netherlands, where ’s Hertogenbosch was located....

Architectural and decorative arts style that flourished in the USA from shortly after the acknowledgement of independence in the Treaty of Paris (1783) until c. 1820. The term is derived from the period surrounding the creation of the federal constitution in 1787 and was in use in a political sense by that year. Essentially it was a form of Neo-classicism, strongly influenced by manifestations of that style in England and, to a lesser extent, in France; but at times certain more conservative qualities inherited from the previous Colonial period are also present. The inspiration of European, and especially English, Neo-classical architecture was to be expected in a society grounded in that of 18th-century England; but an added impetus was the association often cited at the time between the fledgling American republic and the ancient Roman one.

Although a few indications of European Neo-classical influence are found in the American colonies before the Revolution began in ...

Term applied to a style of architecture and the decorative arts inspired by the Gothic architecture of medieval Europe. It has been particularly widely applied to churches but has also been used to describe castellated mansions, collegiate buildings, and houses. The Gothic Revival has also been described by many scholars as a movement, rather than style, for in the mid-19th century it was associated with and propagated by religious and political faith. From a hesitant start in the mid-18th century in England and Scotland, in the 19th century it became one of the principal styles of building throughout the world and continued in some huge projects until well into the 20th century (e.g. Episcopal Cathedral, Washington, DC, 1908–90; by G(eorge) F(rederick) Bodley and others). ‘Gothic Revival’ became the standard English term when Charles Locke Eastlake published A History of the Gothic Revival (1872). The word ‘Gothic’ had by then definitely mutated from a depreciatory epithet into the denomination of a style or period of medieval architecture. To distinguish medieval Gothic from modern Gothic, most European languages used the prefix ‘neo-’ (e.g. Dut. ...

(b Bodiam, E. Sussex, Feb 17, 1849; d London, Aug 21, 1930).

English designer. He was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford, where he studied drawing under John Ruskin. Although he took Holy Orders in 1873, he continued to practise as a designer and eventually gave up his clerical duties in 1882, the year in which Arthur Mackmurdo founded the Century Guild of Artists, London. In 1883 Mackmurdo and Image opened the Century Guild Workshops. Image painted panels and inscriptions and designed inlaid decoration for furniture made by the Guild and also produced the title-page woodcut for its magazine The Hobby Horse, first published in 1884, which he co-edited from 1886 to 1892. The Guild itself was dissolved in 1888. He undertook design commissions in several fields—stained glass, typography, mosaic and embroidery (for the Royal School of Needlework). He also became active within the Art Workers’ Guild, London, of which he became master in 1900. In the same year he began working for the Glasgow furniture manufacturers ...