Arts & Crafts American Style
April 9th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The Enclaves of Elbert Hubbard and Gustav Stickley
I. Roycrofters Village
South Grove and Main Street
East Aurora, New York
Date of visit: August, 2010
Link
II. The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farm
Morris Plains, New Jersey
Date of visit: March 2012
Link
The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin from a private collection
©2012 designhistory.org
Background
The Arts and Crafts Movement originated in England largely inspired by two figures— art critic and Gothic enthusiast John Ruskin (1819-1900) and artist/socialist William Morris (1834–1896). Ruskin planted the seeds of the Arts and Crafts anti-industrial sentiment in the second volume of his treatise, The Stones of Venice. He glorified the Gothic craft workers’ individual freedom of expression through direct contact with their product as opposed to the degradation of late 19th century industrial workers who merely fed materials into machines that were programmed to do the making.
William Morris, part of a group of young men enthralled by Ruskin, gathered a community of like-minded individuals to produce handcrafted goods in harmony with nature, ie. hand-printed fabric and wallpaper using organic dyes as well as furniture and stained glass executed from start to finish by the same skilled craftsman. Morris heavily referenced the medieval period in both subject matter and configuration of the master workshops. His output was artistically superb and his products rendered with expert craftsmanship but unfortunately his prices reflected the laborious production methods limiting his clientele to the wealthy elite. This caused considerable consternation for Morris who was a committed Socialist. (You can read a bit more about Morris and the English Arts & Craft on our design history page here.)
In 1891 Morris started the Kelmscott Press, a private press dedicated to excellence in book production encompassing all aspects of book design— paper, typography, illustration, page layout and binding. His books were essentially art objects meant to be appreciated for their form as well as content.
A trio of Arts and Crafts printed works. In the center William Morris revives the medieval manuscript which is later emulated by (left), Elbert Hubbard and less so by (right), Gustav Stickley.
Between 1895 and 1905 over 130 similarly minded organizations sprang up across Britain and many more were established in Europe and across the Atlantic. In the United States each new community reflected the ideals of Ruskin and Morris as seen through the filter of the American founder’s own vision.
I. Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft Village
The Roycroft Campus
The Inn (bottom left), the current entrance ( in light circle)
The Powerhouse (tall brick chimmey) and Chapel (right
Elbert Hubbard, initiator and spiritual leader of the Roycroft Community, established the successful Arts and Crafts center using his considerable entrepreneurial and self-promotional gifts. Although Hubbard’s methods were sometimes seen as crass, it is undeniable that he was the first to introduce the ideals and aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement into the homes of the average American.
An ingenious promoter and advertising copywriter at Larkin Soap Company, by age 36 Hubbard was successful but frustrated. He lucratively cashed out of Larkin and enrolled in Harvard to pursue his dream of becoming a serious author. University life was not a good fit for the strongly opinionated Hubbard, especially after his professors informed him that he would never amount to much as an author. After a short three months in academia he set off to roam about England while writing a collection of short essays, Little Journeys, recounting his visits to the homes of famous individuals. Some of the articles were from first-hand observation and some were “phantom trips.” There is some question as to whether he actually visited William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, but nevertheless he returned to the US with an epiphany—he would set up his own press and self publish just the same as Morris.
Elbert Hubbard
The Campus Visit
We arrived in town by car having prearranged a tour guide over the internet, ($10 per person, 2 tours daily, reservations suggested). The parking lot of the Gothic and Tudor style campus was filled, not for campus tours, but for the Sunday brunch being served in the Roycroft Inn across the street. There one can dine in the original eating hall accompanied by a live musical ensemble and surrounded by various Hubbardesque homilies carved into heavy oak panels. We didn’t eat there but it looked inviting.
Hubbard's logo in a statue, The Roycroft Inn dining area
Head, Heart and Hand Tour
We met our volunteer guide in the large and plentiful gift shop and were given a thorough background on Hubbard and the community. Although by 1910 the community grew to over 400 workers who produced furniture, pottery and metal-work, the press was the origin and anchor of Hubbert’s venture. We proceeded first to a display set up next to the gift shop. Having read that in its day the press had employed over two hundred workers we were surprised by the meagerness of the print area of the tour. A few small presses sat behind a rope, a Pearl taking center stage, but it did not reflect the importance that printing had in the community.
Reportedly the font favored by Hubbard was Buddy, later renamed Roycroft,
designed by Morris Benton. We spotted the name De Vinne on the cases,
a typeface named for Theodore Low Devine owner of a premier type foundry
at the turn of the 20th century.
Hubbard established the Roycroft printing shop with printer Harry Taber to publish The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, a mouth-piece for his considerable opinions. The publication grew into a successful enterprise gaining a circulation of 200,000 by 1911. Another monthly project, The Fra, was titled after a name he fancied for himself, Fra Albertus. The name Roycroft was derived from London printers Samuel and Thomas Roycroft (active 1650-1690) but the name was applied to all products of the community, made in what Hubbard referred to as the Roycrofty style.
Roycroft books are relatively easy to find, this copy was purchased in New Orleans. The text is peppered with ads for various Roycoft goods, in this case promoting the Inn with the lure of free classes.
What Hubbard wanted most was to print books, and like the Kelmscott Press, to make books that were objects of art. With no printing or illustration background himself, Hubbard gathered a talented staff including book illustrator William Denslow, book designer Samuel Warner and most notably Dard Hunter—later to become a preeminent authority on papermaking. Hubbard’s wife, Bertha, and artist William B. Faville beautifully hand illuminated the press’s higher end editions.
In the illuminated books Hubbard worked hard to emulate the style of Morris, including many decorative borders and manuscript type layouts, but the results were often a bit ham-fisted in comparison to Morris. One has to recognize that William Morris was a wealthy well educated aristocrat while Hubbard was a self-made man from humble beginnings. There was certainly a sensitivity and taste gap between the men in a number of areas.
Illustrators Clara Schlegel, Bertha Hubbard and William Denslow.
A Message to Garcia.
Hubbard’s folksy no-nonsense writing style was popularly successful especially after his 1899 essay, A Message to Garcia became a mega hit selling over 40 million copies. Hollywood even filmed the silent movie version. The essay—”a preachment” —was hastily written by Hubbard in one hour to fill a blank space in The Philistine. Basically the essay is a parable about what makes a resourceful and loyal employee; a person who follows orders without question. The essay was purchased and distributed in droves by corporate bosses eager to squeeze more productivity out of their workers. Printed pamphlets were mass ordered by both the US and foreign armies—jobbed out to large printers who could handle the volume. You can read the entire essay here.
“It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—”Carry a message to Garcia!“
Our guide explained the various campus expansions as Hubbard popularity rose to cult status and more and more visitors made the trip to experience the Roycroft world. To accommodate these travelers an inn was built and furnished with simple furniture manufactured in the compound. The furniture and all of the Roycrofty crafts were designed in the American version of the Arts and Crafts— straightforward, sturdy and simple. During periods when the venture was not consistently profitable Hubbard augmented the operating funds from his salaries as a columnist for the Hearst newspapers and popular national appearances.
A meeting place, The Chapel (an old term used by printers for their shop), was constructed for concerts, community gatherings and addresses by Hubbard. Visiting lecturers included luminaries Clarence Darrow, Clara Barton, Thomas Edison, and Carl Sandburg. In 1910 the Powerhouse supplied heat and electricity to the campus. We were not able to see it due to renovations but it will reopen in April 2012.
Catalog for the Roycroft shop (by Elbert Hubbard, II)
Beyond the idealistic mission of the Roycroft community lies the reality that there is no such thing as Utopia when humans are involved. While Hubbard certainly dressed the part of the artist— sporting long hair and wearing his signature large floppy bow tie and broad-brimmed hats —he was not formally trained and the work produced under his management was artistically uneven. He was known to appropriate phrases from authors and rework them as his own. He was a polarizing figure : for some he was a true prophet of the Art and Crafts but to others a mere poseur (a sentiment William Morris’s daughter claimed her father held). He left more than a few enemies and victims in his wake. Henry Taber, his embittered partner from the establishment of the Roycroft press complained that both his money and plans were usurped by Hubbard. Hubbard’s first wife Bertha suffered through divorce and scandal resulting from his 15-year affair and illegitimate child with school teacher Alice Moore. Although Bertha was well liked and contributed much to the initial establishment of Roycroft she was cleverly maneuvered out of the community by the new Mrs. Hubbard.
The mutual interests of writing and publishing which initially brought Hubbard and Alice together led to their demise in 1915. They chose to travel to Europe to cover World War I and to attempt to interview the Kaiser despite government warnings that ship passage to Europe was dangerous. Hubbard and Alice boarded the Lusitania and died when the ship was torpedoed off of the coast of England.
Without Hubbard’s leadership the Roycroft, the largest and most successful of its type in the US, the village devolved into financial ruin. The business was sold at auction in 1938 and later went into bankruptcy. The campus laid dormant. In 1986 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark and is in process of total restoration. Currently a group of artisans sell hand crafted goods using the Roycroft trademark.
Our tour was well over an hour, the guide was generous with her time when she recognized our interest was more than a casual outing. We were set free to wander at our leisure but we soon left to follow the siren call of Buffalo wings and beef on weck at the Anchor Bar—not on the menu at the nearby Inn.
II. Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farm
Gustav Stickley, the oldest of several brothers who manufactured furniture, opened his own venture in 1888 with partner Elgin Simons. Like Elbert Hubbard, Stickley traveled abroad but upon return his interest focused upon developing what he termed “New Furniture.” He produced a simple, clean and functional style (also called Mission Style, a term he despised) that is most strongly associated with his name. Stickley, who left school in the sixth grade and was mostly self-taught, built his reputation and career through hard work, self-education and fortunate associations. Unlike Hubbard he was not a relentless self-promoter or a natural marketer but a working craftsman and naturalist.
The Tour
We arrived at Craftsman Farm (or the 30 acres that remain of it from the original 600) on an unusually warm Sunday in March. Access off of 78 was easy— only a few miles past chain restaurants and shoppingcenterville are well-marked signs for the turn into a drive shared with a housing development. The property is a public park where one can stroll freely around the buildings and grounds.
The present falls away as you walk down a path to a quiet arrangement of modest period bungalows and the 1911 log house made from local stone and wood. Admission to the house and tour tickets are sold in the gift shop and no food is available on the site.
At the start of the tour our guide described Gustav Stickley as the Martha Stewart of his time and indeed the two do have some similarities: a respect for quality, a magazine to promote a tasteful home and a passion for gardening. Mr. Stickley, however, was deeply grounded in the aesthetics and social values the Arts and Crafts movement.
Front and Side view of the main house, originally intended
to be the main lodge of a boys school.
As we entered the home our first stop was an enclosed porch. In the small written introduction we read about Mr. Stickley’s career trajectory. After almost two decades of successful manufacturing of revival furniture Stickley found a desired style change through his acquaintanceship with two individuals, Henry Wilkinson and Irene Sargent.
Mr. Wilkinson was a graduate of Cornell’s architecture department and an admirer of John Ruskin’s neoGothic persuasions. As the first designer hired by Stickley, Wilkinson set the tone for the future Craftsman Furniture Company. The company began to offer their progressive furniture designs finished in a special (and toxic) ammonia-fumed quartersawn white oak and native woods. Much as his contemporary at Roycroft, Stickley blended hand-made processes with machine manufacturing techniques to bring his product within the reach of middle class consumers.
Stickley's Chips written by Irene Sargent
(Sargent shown in middle, image from Syracuse Faculty Paper Archives)
A Morris style chair by Wilkinson (from the Stickley Museum site)
Gustav's logo before he dropped the e from his name.
Stickley was deeply influenced by Miss Irene Sargent, an art history and French professor at Syracuse University who lead a local group of Arts and Crafts enthusiasts. A highly intelligent and educated individual, Sargent had studied at the Sorbonne, the University of Rome and under Eliot Norton, a Harvard art history professor who was friends with both John Ruskin and William Morris. Although Stickley’s initial contact with Sargent was to study French for an upcoming trip to Europe, she later introduced him to the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Sargent’s mentorshop and her working relationship with Stickley was intense for several years. In 1901 she wrote the text for Stickley’s first publication Chips from the Workshops of Gustav Stickley for neither pay or name credit. It is quite obvious when reading the text—with references to Greece, the Middle Ages and historic European styles—that it was not the product of an elementary school education. In the same year she became the de-facto author and editor of early editions of Stickley’s magazine The Craftsman, the most important publication from the Arts and Crafts movement. For five years she wrote the lead articles covering topics of interest to the home decorator—furniture, architecture, pottery, textiles, basketry, jewelry, stained glass —in essence creating a home life style magazine. After 1905 Ms. Sargent disassociated herself from further Stickley publications for reasons unknown.
In the January 1904 issue Stickley featured the first official Craftsman Home and after that featured at least one house a month. Subscription holders were entitled to one free building plan per year. Approximately 221 plans were published, resulting in an explosion of Arts and Crafts homes, mostly in suburban areas around cities.
In 1905 the Stickley moved his headquarters to New York City and three years later he began acquiring the land for Craftsman Farm with the dream of building a school of citizenship for young boys. Stickley wanted to blend academics with farming to teach the values of both life and nature. Our guide explained that when the boys’ school concept proved unworkable the Stickley family moved from Syracuse to Parsippany.
Quarter sawn oak produces a rich texture, Grueby Tiles typical green glaze
On the porch we saw a number of the trademark materials used by Stickley for his furniture and the Craftsman style home designs he published in The Craftsman. He used a joiner’s compass as his logo along with the phrase “to the best of my ability.”
Tea service for the Craftsman Restaurant, NYC
Logo detail
A glass display case held a tea service set used in the Craftsman restaurant on top of the Craftsman building in Manhattan. Starting in 1913 the restaurant served dishes made from the vegetables, meat, eggs and milk produced on the New Jersey property.
No pictures are allowed inside the home but you can see many of the furniture pieces on the Stickley Museum web site and in various decor magazines on-line. The entire home is one big Arts and Crafts Gesamtkunstwerk— from the heavy copper hooded fireplace, rug patterns, textiles, lamps, even the piano. Mottos and slogans are hammered into the fireplace covers. Some of the furniture was inlaid with pewter and colored woods— the work of the gifted but troubled Harvey Ellis. We spied a complete set of Elbert Hubbard’s publications but when asked if Stickley was a fan, our guide informed us that much to the contrary Mr. Stickley did not appreciate the promotional manner Hubbard placed his logo front and center on his work, nor the self-promotional practices of the Roycroft leader. It is unlikely the collection belonged to Stickley.
Since interior images are not allowed we can only point you to the source of these images, antiquesandthearts.com. The piano shows inlaid work.
The dining area walls are exposed logs.
When both the Craftsman style and national economic bubbles popped in 1915 Stickley was forced to declare bankruptcy and sell Craftsman Farms two years later. He spent the rest of his years living with his daughter in Syracuse, New York. He ceased manufacturing furniture but still experimented with potential wood finishes. The farm was preserved from development by a band of local citizenry who urged the township of Parsippany-Troy Hills to obtain the property through eminent domain. They are working hard to expand the preservation beyond the main house and promote the site as a destination.
After the tour there are 2 small cabins you can explore from the exterior.
The staff was very nice. Our guide was very knowledgable and answered all of our questions. When we realized that we had a problem with our car alarm we had to tie our little dog up at the front door. The lovely lady at the desk pitched in to keep an eye on her for us. Civility circa 1900!
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Guatemala : Historical Printers and Modern Volunteers in the New World
February 19th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Date of Visit: January 24–February 9, 2012
Please note that all photos on this blog are copyright protected by designhistory.org and eallen photography © 2012.
Museo del Libro Antiguo
Portal del Ayuntamiento No 6
La Antigua, Guatemala
Link:http://www.museoscentroamericanos.net/guatemala_museos/libro_antiguo/museo_libro.htm
Centro Cuturale Espania
La Antigua and Guatemala City
Link: http://cceguatemala.org/
Brad Eller Design
La Antigua, Guatemala
Link: http://www.bradeller.com/
How Printing Traveled from Spain to Guatemala
In 1539, seventy years after German printers introduced their craft to Spain, the Spanish became the first Europeans to export printing to the New World. Their motivations were to produce religious tracts in both Spanish and native languages to evangelize the indigenous population as well as supply the needs of church and university communities in Mexico. To accomplish this goal Spanish civil and religious authorities negotiated with Sevillian printer, Juan Cromberger, to create an overseas branch in Mexico City. Cromberger appointed his employee, Italian-born Giovanni Paoli (Juan Pablos), to set up and manage his New World press. An entire print shop’s inventory including press, type, paper, ink supplies, tools and staff were freighted over the Atlantic Ocean and transported overland into the interior of Mexico. The shop crew included Pablos, his wife Gerónima Gutiérrez (who by terms of the contract worked alongside her husband without a salary), Gil Barbero and Pedro, a black servant.
The difficulty of importing type and paper from Europe coupled with political and religious restrictions on printing dampened the Mexican printer’s design innovation. Typographic advances did eventually begin with the arrival of Antonio de Espinosa (d.1578) in 1551. It is believed Espinosa cut typefaces for Pablos, introducing the Renaissance styles of roman and italic types to replace the press’s Gothic Rotunda forms. Espinosa eventually started his own press where he produced his 16th century masterpiece, Missale Romanum Ordinarium, in 1561.
Espinosa Nova / The Missale Romanum, 1561 (John Carter-Brown Library, Yale University)
In 2010 Mexican-based type designer Cristóbal Henestrosa digitized a revival type design, Espinosa Nova, based upon the faces used by the Espinosa press. You can read more about his award-winning design here.
Printing spread very slowly from Mexico City through Latin America. A second Spanish press was established in Lima, Peru in 1581 by Antonio Ricciardi (an Italian who printed in Mexico for 15 years prior). In 1640 the third Spanish press center was based in Puebla, Mexico and it was from that location that a press and printer were procured for initiating the fourth Spanish-American printing press in Guatemala.
Visiting the Museo del Libro Antiguo in Antigua, Guatemala
(Formerly known as Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala)
The idea of a Guatemalan press was put forth by the Bishop of Guatemala, Payo Enriquez de Rivera, a scholar interested in publishing his theological writings. The bishop charged Father Francisco de Borja (a member of an important printing family) to travel to Puebla, Mexico to obtain both a printing press and a printer for the city of Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala. Father Borja returned with a Lyon style press and printer Jose de Pineda Ibarra (1629-1680). (below left)
Once he was settled into his shop Ibbara set about production of ecclesiastical pieces, the first a sermon by monk Francisco de Quiónez. Because of the vast number (50) of monasteries and nunneries the workshop bustled with work, enough to engage one or two typesetters, two printers and an apprentice for 12 to 16 hours a day. The subject matter included eulogies, sermons, books of hours, regulations, and descriptions of religious festivities.
In 1663 Ibbara produced his most ambitious work, Bishop de Rivera’s 700 page Explicatio Apologetica Nonnullarum Proposititionum a Theologo Quandam Non Dextere Notatarum. The shop typographic style was more Renaissance roman rather than the traditional rotunda gothic. Ibarra also acted as a book binder and book seller until his death in 1679 whereupon his son Antonio took over the press until 1721.
The first book printed in Guatemala, 1663 / (r) A 1774 account of the great earthquake.
The Museo dei Libro Antiguo is small but earnest institution dedicated to the preservation and display of antique printed books, most notably those produced by Ibarra. It is located in the lovely Spanish colonial city of La Antigua, Guatemala, (formerly Santiago de los Caballeros) a green valley in close proximity to two inactive and one active volcano. Although once the nation’s capital, catastrophic earthquakes and almost total devastation in the 1700′s necessitated that the government move to the more stable location in The Valley of the Shrine, now Guatemala City. Today, La Antigua, despite having been rebuilt a number of times, is still filled the ruins of dozens of churches and cloisters—some worth visiting, some merely facades. The city was designated a cultural treasure by UNESCO in 1979.
La Antigua’s central square is dominated by the arched city hall, Palacio Del Ayuntamiento, a host to municipal offices as well as to the Museo dei Libro Antiguo. Finding the entrance to the museum took a bit of persistence since none of the local tourist offices seemed to know that it existed, let alone where it was located. A YouTube video posted by a tourist provided the key— look for the door numbered 6 under the Palacio’s arched portico.
#6 Museum Door Address/ (r) The City Hall in which the Museum resides
Admission to the museum costs 35 quetzales (about $5 US) for non-nationals and 5 quetzales (about 80¢) for nationals. Inside the first room we found narratives beginning with Gutenberg’s invention of printing in Germany. Displayed inside of glass showcases are early books from Spain and Spanish colonial presses. A second room concentrates on Ibarra’s printing and the use of lithographic stones and wood cuts for illustration. The prize of the museum is Ibarra’s Explicatio Apologetica (previously shown above). We didn’t recognize the type face used by Ibbara but with the aid of a very helpful librarian in the Centro Cuturale Espania we were introduced to a text on the life of Ibarra. Unfortunately that did not shed light on the face either so we throw an identification challenge out to you at this link.
A Spanish Dictionary /Brotherhood of the Souls of Pergatory 1810
17th Century Border Decoration / Street sign for Earthquake Carnival Fundraiser 2012
Sincretismo (the harmonizing of two religious beliefs) in Guatemala refers to the merger of the indigenous Mayan religion with the Catholicism of Spanish colonials. There also seems to be a harmony of visual imagery when we saw the decorative motifs used on books and printed ephemera around the city. The decorative book treatments reminded us of the intensive embroidery we saw on the blouses of the Mayan women. Traditional clothing is still worn in force by Mayans of all ages—especially women.
We were intrigued by how a local letterpress shop, Libros San Cristobal, integrated the native textiles into their book bindings. Other regional materials are used— handmade amate paper (produced from a 1952 recipe), local sheep parchment, and alligator and jade closures. Editor Catherine Docter was out of town at Codex Mexico, a fine book fair/expo. We’ve included a few images from their Facebook page (no web site at the moment).
Woman from weaving co-op on Lake Atitlan / Cover by Libros San Cristobal
Pressman and various works from Libros San Cristobel
Colors at the women's clothes wash / Chicken Bus!
Brad Eller Design
Initially we discussed the contemporary graphic design scene in Guatemala. As an American who has lived in Guatemala for the past few years, Brad still has the perspective of an outsider yet, because his wife is Guatemalan, understands the mindset of the current culture. He observes a general conservatism that he suspects is due to the aftermath of Guatemala’s period of La Violencia, (1960–1996). During that period over 400 Guatemalan indigenous villages were burned to the ground, more than 600 massacres were committed and more than 200,000 people were either killed or disappeared. Just a little over a decade after a truce was brokered by Norway, Guatemalans are still getting used to (relative) stability and safety and have not had time to develop beyond their artistic traditions.
Brad Eller reviews our collection of gothic lettered signs shot around the city
Eller teaches Lancetillo kids in La Zona Reyna, Quiché / Calendar for Corazon Scarves
Back in the wintry US we miss a lot about La Antigua — our daily trip to the vegetable market, the unpredictable puffs from the volcano and the rich mixture of Mayan, Spanish and international culture. Like so many places we’ve seen before, we would like to return again some day. But for now we are laying out our plans for the next excursion.
Roasting peppers on a comal, guisquil in egg batter, our chef/instructor at El Frijol Feliz
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Punch-cutter Nelly Gable: Steel Magnolia of the Imprimerie Nationale
December 13th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Imprimerie Nationale
Le Cabinet des poinçons et Atelier du livre d’art et de l’estampe
Ivry-sur-Seine, France
Date of Visit: March 2007
École Estienne
18 boulevard Auguste-Blanqui
75013 Paris
Date of Visit: March 2007
The Grolier Club
47 E 60th Street, New York
Date of Visit: December 7, 2011
Link: http://www.grolierclub.org/
Please note, all text © 2011 Design history.org.
All photos © 2011 by Designhistory.org and Charles de Limur
Some Background
We first learned about Nelly Gable, the assumed one and only female punch-cutter in the history of the world, during a type history class taught by James Mosely at the Rare Book School in 2002. Our ears pricked up the mention of her name—not only was the lecture finally including a women but she was still alive and held an important position in France’s Imprimere Nationale. Mr. Mosely distributed one of her poems, gy, or the magical journey of a punch cutter at work, which was so French, so female and so typographic that we were convinced that we should try to meet her. In the spring of 2007 we arranged to visit Mme. Gable in her punch-cutting studio (Cabinet des Poinçons) then housed temporarily in an industrial complex in Ivry-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. Our objective for the visit was to record Mme. Gable’s career and perhaps document the final production base of hand punch-cutting in the world.
In addition to being the single woman in her field, Nelly Gable (b. 1957) is one of the few remaining punch-cutters qualified to instruct any future practitioners in the centuries old craft. The occupation of punch-cutting, quite simplified, is the engraving (or sculpting) of single metal letterforms in a specific size and style. This complex process is commonly believed to have originated when Johann Gutenberg used his jeweler’s expertise to cut punches, sink matrices and cast individual types. This simple invention precipitated a social and cultural revolution in the western hemisphere.
To understand the significance of Mme. Gable’s position it would be helpful to become familiar with the heritage of her place of employment. The Imprimerie Nationale, one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the world, has a long heritage of book production from its printing and type production facilities. Its origin, as listed on the official corporate timetable, began in 1538 when arts patron King Francis I assigned printer Conrad Neobar the title of “King’s Printer for Greek.” Neobar only lived until 1540 when Robert Éstienne, another royal appointee, assumed responsibility for the Greek, Latin and Hebrew publications. It was under Éstienne that the elegant royal greek types (grecs du roi) were produced based upon the accomplished work of the calligrapher Angelos Vertetios. The typographic master Claude Garamont was commissioned to cut the punches for the new font. (A longer family tree of important figures are listed later in this posting.)
Engraved letters and prints of the Romain du roi, commissioned by Louis XIV, 1692
Detail of print / Engraved plate both for the king's roman
The printing house has weathered a number of financial highs and lows over the past centuries. During the French Revolution its director was executed and the entire operation was evicted from its location in the Louvre. It regained importance during the period of Napoleonic campaigns when the government called upon the institution’s collection of exotic typefaces to print collateral material for use in foreign locations. During the early 19th century the institution slipped into mediocrity but by 1895 it was revitalized and resumed producing superior editions of fine print and illustration. In 1921 the establishment moved to an impressive building on the Rue de la Convention in the 15th arrondissement of Paris and it was at that location that Mme. Gable was first employed. Economic hardships in the late 20th century had serious repercussions when the management of the now privatized Imprimerie Nationale decided to sell the building placing the future of the historical printing works in jeopardy. An alarmed international typographic community sought to protect the collection by circulating a petition, Save the Heritage of the French National Printing Works, addressed to the French President.
Visiting the Imprimerie Nationale
We knew our interview would be a pleasant one since our interpreter, Mr. Charles DeLimur, had spoken with Mme. Gable on the telephone to confirm our meeting date and reported back that she was energetic and enthused about our meeting. (Mme. Gable does not speak English and our French was certainly not up to an interview so bringing along an interpreter was necessary). She met us at the RER train station and we walked together for several blocks along a street edging a large industrial complex, a rather gritty introduction to the day. She is a petite and delicate woman with a short, spiky white haircut and impressively long dangling earrings. Wonderfully dressed in a black mini skirt, black textured stockings and knee-high boots with heels, she deftly picked her way around a burned out car shell while dodging the frequently passing vehicular traffic. I would later come to seeing this walk as a metaphor for Mme. Gable and her approach to life — stylishly and determinedly making her way around daunting obstacles.
Upon our arrival at our destination Mme. Gable met her fellow employees with a quick succession of three alternating cheek kisses. We were introduced to her atelier mate, digital type designer Franck Jalleau, who was busily working at his computer screen on characters for an Arabic font. Mr. Jalleau does not describe himself as a type designer but as an ‘originator-draughtsman’ of characters. His work has earned numerous awards including the prestigious Morisawa award in 1996. Mme. Gable and Mr. Jalleau have worked as a team on projects including creating a punchcut and digital symbol (respectively) used for the euro and, in 2002, the official typeface for the French city of Brive-la-Galliard.
Working at the punch-cutter's bench / Endless checking for a solidly level face on type
The punch-cutting and design studio is located on the second floor of the building — a long rectangular room with one side comprised of large windows overlooking an industrial parking lot. Along the windowed wall is a massive worktable (établi) from which two semi-circles have been removed to allow the punch-cutter to sit partially encircled by the table. The work surface is covered with a myriad of instruments for punch-cutting, many of which were outfitted with champagne corks as handles.
We began our discussion by reviewing Mme. Gable’s life prior to her work as a punch-cutter because we were curious how one prepared for this specialized occupation—no schools offer a course in punchcutting. Mostly taught through apprenticeships under a master punch-cutter, one still needed to arrive with the appropriate skill set for intricate metal working. She was amply prepared having taken a double foundation in Industrial Design at the École Boulle in Paris. The school, named after the 17th century French artisan Andre-Charles Boulle (cabinetmaker and sculptor to Louis XIV), was founded in 1886 and has built a reputation for turning out highly qualified students for the applied art and design industry. Mme. Gable undertook a range of studies including classes in metal engraving and furniture studio course before specializing in the art of miniature metalworking. In the midst of her studies she began working as a jewelry designer for Murat in Paris, designing and sculpting various small pieces of jewelry. During this period she developed a fascination with masks and she produced a series of jewelry pieces based upon African and northwestern American native motifs.
Nelly's African Jewelry / Female Only poetry edition, first publication of gy
Nelly Gable’s Early Years at the Cabinet des Poinçons
Nelly Gable entered punch-cutting professionally in 1987 when the impending retirement of a punch-cutter at the Cabinet des Poinçons necessitated a search for a replacement. The management of the Imprimerie Nationale contacted her school and Mme Gable’s name was suggested. There were two other women in her class at the École Boulle who worked in metal but neither of them was experienced in miniatures. She was invited to compete for the position and was given a very rigorous examination involving the cutting of a small and thin Didot-like letterform. Her superior performance outshone her competition and she became, unknowingly, the first woman in history to work as a punch-cutter. At the start of her new career Mme. Gable was thirty years old, married and the mother of a one-year-old child.
Her introduction into then all-male workplace required some adjustments both by Mme. Gable and by her new employers. It soon became clear that the management was somewhat vexed that their new employee was a woman and they placed certain stringent conditions on her employment. One condition was that she was not to have another child in the first three years of her employment. She complied with this and waited until 1990 to have her second child and her last in 1993. During these years there was a suspicion in the management that she would not persist at her position because in France, at that time, a woman could fully retire with the combination of fifteen years of work and a third child. (She discovered a notation in her personnel file saying that management should not be fooled because she would most certainly leave after her last child.) Working under such a prejudice still did not prepare her for the shock she received after she returned after her third maternity leave — she found her name had been summarily removed from her workroom door.
Apart from the childbearing issue there were other points of contention that arose from her gender. The first issue of concern was her mode of dress. Traditionally the men in her position wore plain black over-jackets with white shirts and ties underneath. She arrived on her first day in a multi-colored ensemble with her customary large earrings (that particular pair had feathers), which prompted her new boss to suggest that perhaps it wasn’t possible to work in such attire. Mme. Gable, deciding that she was not going to don a black coat and fade into the woodwork, did not compromise her clothing choices and eventually the issue became moot.
In general her workplace, as at most large institutions, was mired in bureaucratic policies that rigidly defined each employee’s work parameters. She felt that her ceiling as “not a glass one but rather a steel one” to emphasize the amount of perseverance and stamina it took to introduce change into her workplace. An especially difficult challenge for her was to gain permission to learn skills that lay beyond the punch-cutter’s bench. She wanted to train on the machinery that was used for both the preliminary and finishing stages of punch making but all of this equipment was located directly below her on the ground floor and the heavy stratification of workers did not allow for the intermingling of the departments. After ten years of requests she was finally granted permission to learn how to use the machine shop equipment. Her training began with traditional introduction of an apprentice machine worker — with her thoroughly cleaning each machine.
New packages of type from old masters
During our visit Mme Gable led us down to the ground floor of the building to the print shop where there was a vast array of mechanisms for casting and composing type, letterpress printing, lithography, copperplate engraving and collotype. At that particular moment the shop was animated with the clacking sounds of a Monotype machine casting type and several presses in use. Here we saw a demonstration of her expertise with machines that squared up and metered the steel bar in preparation for becoming a punch plus a demonstration of striking the matrix. The striking process is not done with a hard blow but by placing a finished punch in a device that slowly presses the punch into a copper bar. Mme. Gable has mastered all of the equipment necessary to take a punch and matrix through all of the stages up to, but not including, the casting of the type. If she had not persevered in her additional training it is not clear who would retain the working knowledge of these processes because it was not apparent that anyone else remained that knew the complete method of production. The walls of the print shop are lined with shelves full of packages of cast fonts of the famous French typefaces. We viewed the original steel engraved plates of the characters of the romain du roi. They were being printed as a set of limited edition prints — part of the effort to find ways to help salvage the collection from financial exigency. Elsewhere in the pressroom bookmarks designed by Mme Gable using characters from the Chinese character collection were in the process of being printed. A lithographic press was being readied for giclée gelatin printing.
After ten years Nelly was allowed to train in the machine shop
We broke from the interview to lunch with several of Mme Gable’s co-workers. Even though we were in a very industrial area it was still France and therefore a nice neigborhood restaurant was within a short walk. Over a glass of red wine and country duck we listened to Franck Jalleau discuss the digital translation of the type faces he was mining from the historical collection. There was plenty of lively joking and teasing between the group who obviously are closely knit and seemed to have no issue with working alongside a woman.
Boxes of punches / Inset of punches with Gable stamp
Afterwards and back upstairs in the Cabinet des Poinçons, Mme. Gable described her early training under the master punch-cutter in the atelier. She started out cutting larger type sizes, about 42 points. For the first five years in the atelier her work was reviewed by the senior punch-cutter, Christian Paput, who would make some final refinements and strike his name into her work. She moved on to progressively smaller sizes until she reached 12 points. [Note: The point sizes mentioned here are Didot, which is somewhat larger than the American and English point sizes]. Because of her previous training she was able to skip the first year of unpaid apprenticeship and begin her first year of training with a salary. Today, having climbed through all of the levels of punch-cutting categories to Chief Graveur, she ponders the possibility of attempting the next level described as “out of category.” It is the sort of challenge that beckons to Mme. Gable.
The French Punch-cutting Process
The materials for type production are a steel punch, a copper matrix and the type metal made from an alloy of 70 percent lead, 5 percent tin, 25 percent antimony. Through Mme. Gable’s demonstration and explanations we were educated in the steps of the French method of punch-cutting, a process entirely accomplished by subtractive carving and filing. First a steel bar is prepared in the appropriate size for the point size being cut. (It goes through several stages of tempering and squaring before the process begins). A letterform is sketched or transferred onto the end surface of the steel bar and the outside of the bar is filed down to angled edges with successively finer files until there remains just the flat area that will comprise the letter. The files are then held at angles to make inroads into any areas to be removed and, when filing no longer is possible, the punch-cutter uses a graver to dig out the rest of the letter. Ever so tiny slivers of metal are removed. At successive stages the letter is tested by making a smoke proof (fumé), a print made from a film of soot collected on the end of the punch. The soot is collected by holding the punch over the flame of an oil lamp, the ‘lampe pigeon’. Then the letter is pressed onto paper, making a crisp impression of the emerging letter and corrections are made as needed and proofed again. The whole process is painstaking, exacting and time consuming.
Engraved punch / Smoke proof
In other countries the punch-cutting method varied in that the letterform started with a counterpunch.(The counters are the negative shapes inside the letter such as the opening in a letter ‘o’.) The counters are formed by striking tiny round or oval shaped punches into the surface of the punch as opposed to the French method of digging with a graver. Counter-punching is a practical method because it is speedier than digging and allows for uniformity in the counters across an entire font. The French method demands that the punch-cutter make more individualized decisions concerning counter forms, which in turn affects the final design of the font.
Mme. Gable’s favorite fonts to cut are the ones that are the least perfect and cites the font Luce as an example. Because Luce is “not so perfect but lively and poetic” she needs to bring all of her talent into keeping it true to the original design. Fonts come in a number of sizes and weights, often including italics, small capitals, ligatures, decorative symbols and special characters. Every single letter of every size and weight is cut separately therefore a set of punches for a complete font could easily take a year or more to complete. During the twentieth century punch-cutting by hand has been eclipsed by faster processes and there has been no call for a new font for many years. The last complete font cut in the Cabinet des Poinçons was Le Gauthier, by the late Louis Gauthier just before he retired in 1979. Apart from her recent production of a specialty font for Brive la Galliard, Nelly’s punchcutting work is concerned primarily with repairing and replacing the punches in the collection.
Preserving the Patrimonie of the Cabinet des Poinçons
Despite the considerable expense and efforts to reinstall the workshops into the new location, the Cabinet des Poinçons and the historical printing works still have an uncertain future beyond 2012. Nelly’s most important task is finding ways to preserve the collection and to secure its future. The first solution would be to make the continuation of workshops financially viable through specialty print production. As a first attempt she designed and published a series of six books entitled Suite Pastoral 10 in 2003. Each book is a thematic homage to the masters of French engraving in the 19th century combining wood engravings with hand set type from the collection. The whimsical and charming type exercises are still available for purchase from the Imprimere Nationale.
The workshops are promoting themselves as a unique historical press in an impressive brochure, La mémoire vive de l’ecrit, which extols their special capabilities. A list of the exclusive historical typefaces: Garamont of François I, Granjean and Jaugeon of Louis the XIV, Luce of Louis XV, le Didot of Napoléon I, Marcellin-Legrand of Charles X and Gauthier of the 20th century confirms the pedigree of the shop’s type inventory. The collection also includes a number of faces acquired at the closing of the Deberny & Peignot type foundry in 1975. With her extensive knowledge of the collection Mme. Gable feels that there are an inexhaustible number of fonts in residence that would have great potential for digitalization and could be a strong new source of revenue.
If a commercial venture is not viable there is hope that the government can be convinced to preserve the workshops in the same manner as the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium and the Workshops and Museum of Printing Art in Leipzig, Germany have been able to successfully make the transition from industrial production to working museums. There is also the possibility that preservation can be made through a liaison with an educational institution.
A Visit to École Estienne
Ecole Estienne
Franck Jalleau teaches font design in the Typography Design Studio at L’École Estienne and envisages a link between the Cabinet des Poinçons and the school. The two-year typography program, initiated in 1992, offers an applied arts degree to approximately 40-50 students annually. He invited us to visit his class and tour the excellent typesetting, printing and computer facilities.
At École Estienne, Margaret Gray (standing left), Franck Jalleau (right fore) shows us digital student work / A student with her display of letterforms evolved from sketches.
On the day of our visit we observed Professor Margaret Gray’s typography class in session and Ms. Gray explained how their process of teaching font design is borne out of a combination of classes in calligraphy, typography and digital design. I asked her why she thought continuing the practice of punch-cutting is important in our computer age and she responded:
“Traditional typesetting (lead) is still interesting for its material value. Why do we have offset and silkscreen and numeric printing? It’s the same question… Their qualities and effects are different and are applicable to different situations. It’s a luxury item to be sure. But there are plenty of luxury items on the market! It is also a valuable tool and an enriching dimension for analyzing historical fonts. Their sculptural quality is intrinsic in font design. Drawing, sculpting and engraving do not produce the same results. But they are all parts of type design, its origins and evolutions.”
It is easy to see how the punch-cutting studio and wealth of historical information from the Imprimerie Nationale’s historical workshops would be an invaluable addition to a type design program. Although she is optimistic about the future, Mme. Gable realizes that preservation of the entire Atelier du Livre d’Art et de l’Estampe is going to be very difficult. All of the ideas described in the previous paragraphs have been proposed but they have not yet gained enough traction to secure a serious commitment from either the French government or a private organization. She has however rallied many supporters and there has been an influential group formed to explore and promote solutions for the future. (There are currently some plans to try to move the entire collection to Caen in Normandy.) When we parted from Nelly Gable that day we took the memory of her warmth and energy and felt assured that she was absolutely the best person to tackle the challenges ahead.
Nelly Gable at the Grolier Club
Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale es Poinçons
Fast forward 4 years to the Grolier Club in New York City. (For the unfamiliar the private club was founded in 1884. It houses a research library and organizes exhibitions, lectures and workshops on printing history that are open to the general public.) Currently and through February 4, 2012 the club is presenting Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale. The exhibition, curated by H. George Fletcher is also memorialized in a handsome hardbound catalogue printed at the Imprimerie Nationale and available for purchase. Large showcases hold well-preserved type making artifacts and beautiful rare books printed at the Imprimerie Nationale and clear explanations outline its various historical periods. If you are at all curious about the historical process of type making or printing this would be a wonderful introduction.
Traveling to the exhibition was really unpleasant, there was a driving rain made even more miserable by the endless throngs of tourists and shoppers clogging midtown Manhattan in the pre-holiday frenzy. Once inside the club doors off Madison Avenue however everything was calm, welcoming and dry. We started with a research stop in the library with some books that had been thoughtfully pulled by librarian Meghan Constantiou. She introduced us to Mr. Fletcher who recounted his visits to Imprimerie Nationale as well as some details about the printing of the exhibition catalog. He would act as Nelly’s translator for the audience gathering to watch the punch-cutting presentation. We moved downstairs to the exhibition hall which featured a large table covered with all of the accoutrements for making punches. A steel bar, lampe pigeon, files, calibration devices, etc. Nelly was introduced as the French movie star punch-cutter, and brought some continental glamour with a bit of flame red camisole peeking out over her black jacket. Nicely done. Again we felt a bit drab in comparison.
George Fletcher (left) translates as Nelly Gable demonstrates at the Grolier Club
The presentation explained most of the processes we had seen in Ivry-sur-Seine but mostly through explanation or picture. Unless you see the process in action it is almost impossible to grasp the delicacy of punch-cutting. It may have helped the audience when they read Nelly’s poem, gy, that was printed in France and distributed to them as a gift. The last sentence reads, The shoulders “mirror polished,” the gentle inclines that safeguard a particular angle, the fragile yet vigorous swelling of the curves, what a plentitude of forms:It is monumental, a thing of beauty, a typographic punch.
Sheila Waters : Granddaughter, Mother and Queen of Calligraphy
November 9th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Date of Visit: October 2012
Location: Fairfield, Pennsylvania
Associated Link: Washington Calligraphers Guild
All images copyrighted, photos by Eric Allen
If after 5 years of study one can become proficient in calligraphy and after 15 years of practice a master, what level is obtained after a 60-year career? According to Hermann Zapf in the case of Sheila Waters you become the Queen of Calligraphy (or so he inscribed in a dedication to her). Our visit to Mrs. Waters’ studio convinced us that Mr. Zapf was correct plus we would additionally suggest the titles of calligraphic granddaughter of the legendary Edward Johnston and the mother of calligraphy in the United States.
The view through Sheila Waters' studio window.
The Waters’ Residence
Normally we visit destinations that are open to everyone but this trip was a special glimpse into the private world of master calligrapher Sheila Waters. Our drive to the Waters’ residence in southern Pennsylvania brought us to the gently rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, warmed in the autumnal glow of late October. Peter and Sheila Waters built their home overlooking those hills shortly after Mr. Waters retired from his position as the Chief of Conservation at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The couple had one of those special marriages in which distinct yet complimentary talents created an even stronger whole. Mr. Waters, considered the father of American library conservation, was a master bookbinder and an innovator in book conservation. His techniques saved priceless manuscripts and rare books after the flooding of the Arno River in Florence, Italy in 1966. For three months Mrs. Waters assisted her husband by editing, drawing plans and elevations for equipment plus hand-lettering the treatment and condition cards used to describe each item reclaimed for the National Library in Florence. He in turn would critique and make design suggestions to his wife’s calligraphic compositions. Although Mr. Waters passed away in 2003 his spirit is still evident in his beautiful book bindings and his career continues to be honored by his wife at various events and speaking engagements (most recently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC on the observation of the 45th anniversary of the floods).
Peter and Sheila at work and the treatment and condition cards used in Florence.
Early Life
Born Sheila Salt in 1929, Mrs. Waters was one of the many London area children evacuated to the English countryside during World War II and it was in that period that she displayed her first formal hand lettering on a poster for the war effort. Seeing what her twelve-year-old hand produced was interesting, unfortunately not the first prizewinner but given meritorious notice. We were also able to view a nice selection of her earliest work demonstrating her strong skills in drawing and design.
A poster lettered at age 12 and Sheila's first manuscript (pair not scaled)
Sheila’s formal art studies began at Medway College of Art in Rochester, Kent where she elected several different areas of study. An extremely driven student (with the modest goal of becoming one of the best women artists in the world), she compressed the first two years of courses into one, followed by a year in which she studied stone and zinc-plate lithography, typographic design, book binding and hand type setting. In her last year she concentrated on calligraphy, which she characterized as “an epiphany.” (She was compelled to learn more about calligraphy after being hired to letter a sign declaring “No Tomatoes Today”!) To earn her national design diploma she completed some rather rigorous final exams: a three hour written exam on the history of writing and illuminating manuscripts and an intense design challenge completed in two weeks time.
Examination piece after one year of calligraphy studies ©2011 Sheila Waters
An important element in her education came during six months of weekly study visits to the British Museum where, despite being only 18, she was given special permission to observe and copy directly from the priceless manuscripts, including the 7th century Lindisfarne Gospels. One can see how the ancient manuscript’s letterforms, displays of color and control of intricate decoration influenced her later work. At age 19 Sheila was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art where, along with her entire first year class, she attended the required Wednesday calligraphy class of Dorothy Mahoney. Mrs. Mahoney had been a teaching assistant to Edward Johnston (1872-1944), the man most credited with the revival of fine calligraphy during the Arts and Crafts period. Johnston’s teaching method, based on his reconstruction of the principles of formal writing, was primarily carried forward by women: Anna Simons (1871-1951) in Germany, Irene Wellington(1904-1984) at Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and Dorothy Mahoney (1902-1984) at the RCA. Mrs. Waters’ interest in calligraphy developed into a career choice despite the derision of other studio teachers who undervalued calligraphy as “Dorothy’s knitting.” Perhaps that sort of prejudice is the reason that the calligraphy classes were primarily female.
Dorothy Mahoney with Sheila Waters, Dorothy Mahoney's text
Mrs. Mahoney taught in the same room in which Johnston lectured and she drew demonstration letters on Johnston’s original chalkboard. Mrs. Waters recalls her teacher as a forthright and trustworthy individual with an upper crust accent that was sometimes the object of student impersonations. Mahoney’s strength was her spot-on critical eye, equally strong for calligraphy as well as all other artistic mediums. Her calligraphic style diverged from Johnston’s in that Johnston moved toward a condensed hand but Mahoney preferred the more open Italian Humanist italic and Roman minuscule. Today one does not hear much of Mrs. Mahoney, most likely because she was primarily a teacher and she was practicing her craft in a time when calligraphy was losing ground in typography and design studies.
Professional Life in England
Shortly after graduation Mrs. Waters’ professional career began to flourish. She was inducted as a fellow into the prestigious Society of Scribes and Illuminators, a group founded in 1921 by Johnston’s students. Additionally Alfred Fairbank (the father of modern italic handwriting) hired her as one of 10 scribes who produced the Royal Air Force Roll of Honour memorial books. Over the next twenty years she worked with Hans Schmoller, (typographer and successor to Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books) by designing and executing a myriad of maps for various publications. The work was entirely hand done and often involved her combining information from typographic maps with the author’s text and then hand writing the names in italic or Roman minuscule. One particularly immense project, The Campaigns of Napoleon for MacMillian publishing, required 73 maps, 43 in two color separations and one with multiple overlays on frosted mylar. Seven exhausting months of long days and late nights paid off when the maps were singled out for praise in Paul Standard’s book review for The New York Times. Not only was her professional life booming during these years, her marriage to Peter Waters was blessed with three sons—a period she describes as her most productive.
Pencil sketch for map, palette of blended colors for text work
Teaching & Commissions in the United States
In 1971 Peter Waters was appointed Chief of Conservation at the Library of Congress and the family immigrated to the United States on the QE2. With the previously unknown security of a regular paycheck a home was purchased in Bethesda, Maryland. A year later Mrs. Waters started a calligraphy program for the Smithsonian Institute’s adult classes as well as her own private instruction where she built a stable of calligraphers. In 1976 she organized a group of her students to create the Washington Calligraphers Guild, now over 500 members strong. In 2009 a special exhibition “Sheila Waters: A Retrospective, 60 years in the Calligraphic Arts” was mounted in Strathmore Hall Arts Center, Bethesda MD. A comprehensive fully-illustrated journal was designed using a custom digital typeface (not yet available) created by Mrs. Waters’s son Julian Waters, himself a master calligrapher and frequently a teaching partner with his mother. However, Julian’s well-known typeface Waters Titling, designed for Adobe, is available for purchase. (Information on obtaining copies of the Retrospective journal can be directed to this email address, waters_sheila@yahoo.com.) Both Julian and his mother have been asked for advice from digital designers who are trying to create believable script typefaces for use on the computer. They generously help despite their growing resignation that more digital scripts will mean less potential for their hand lettered commissions.
Sheila Waters at 80 cover, Julian's font debut @2011 Julian Waters
Among more than 200 pieces in the exhibition were four of the most important highlights of her career:
Under Milkwood translated to blind embossed.
1 Under Milk Wood
Sheila’s famous manuscript of Dylan Thomas’ radio play Under Milk Wood. A private commission from Edward Hornby in 1961 was finally completed in 1978 (life had a way of getting in the way of completion). Remarking on the seriousness of this commission she noted, “ I realized that this major work would outlive me and in another 500 years I would be evaluated by the quality of the work alone.” The text was executed in her personal adaptation of Carolingian and decorated with 25 of her illustrations. The actual manuscript is now in the Wormsley Librarycollection of the late Sir Paul Getty in the UK.
Less that 12 inches wide yet a giant in contemporary calligraphy © 2011 Sheila Waters
2 Roundel of the Seasons
Produced in 1981 this work is considered her masterpiece. The calligraphy, color selection, miniature painting and design were produced after 1,000 hours of concentrated work. The process was not easy, there were times that she was discouraged and debated not finishing but suggestions from her husband helped her strengthen the final piece.
3 Tor House
Numerous weights and textures were used to reflect the emotions in Robinson Jeffers poem.
4 Foundations of Calligraphy
Ms Waters’ influential textbook Foundations of Calligraphy, (2006). Reprinted 2008.
The study and practice of calligraphy has gone in and out of vogue as part of design studio curriculums over the past century. (While we were attending grad school the emphasis was not on letterform but on moving letters, words or paragraphs around inside of a square or rectangle to get the right composition. There was little or no discussion of letterform creation.) Currently however there is a surge in experimental lettering and digital font creation—with or without instruction in calligraphy and calligraphic history. Mrs. Waters advocates for preserving our calligraphic heritage by practice, not just by viewing historical documents. “We have to take care of the core of the art form we love so much and hand it on unspoiled to the next generation.” For those who wish to really understand lettering it is important to undertake serious study and for that there is no equal to Sheila Waters’ text, Foundations of Calligraphy.
We asked her advice for the novice who is interested in building a solid calligraphic base and were told that the best route is to learn all of the basic historical hands. She has concerns about the viability of calligraphy as a career in the age of computers but there seems to be no end to artists who practice the art for the sheer joy of making letters. (Here is a short clip of a her discussing pen angles)
Currently Sheila conducts weeklong intensive master classes for invited or recommended students who arrive from all parts of the globe to study in her studio. An Epson projector has replaced the Johnston’s chalkboard method but her techniques remain as grounded in tradition as her former teacher’s. The studio is spacious and well lit with individual workstations and plenty of books, displays of Mrs. Waters’ work plus treasures such as rubbings and a stone engraved sample by Edward Catich. A nearby kitchen and table provide the class with a break area and all of the students have accommodations in the large house. Gourmet dinners are catered and served upstairs in the evening. Additionally her schedule includes workshops away from home, such as at Camp Cheerio and the annual international conferences.
The teaching studio
It is impossible to overvalue the impact of Shelia Waters on contemporary calligraphers or the current understanding of calligraphic lettering. With 20 years of summer workshops, the Smithsonian classes, the Washington Guild, her private classes, her articles for Letter Arts Review and her textbook, she has done as much as humanly possible to pass on the legacy of traditional calligraphy.
The queen and her waiting subjects, (below) a contented Mopsie napping nearby.
Six hours after our arrival we drove away armed with a copy of the beautiful retrospective journal and also a copy of Foundations of Calligraphy carrying her favorite inscription.
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Springtime of Argentine Art & Design : Marina, Yani, Elosia and Evita
October 15th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
September/October 2011
1. Marina Soria Studio
Palermo District, Buenos Aires
Link: http://www.marinasoria.com.ar/
2. Yani Arabena (with Guille Vizzari )
Link: http://www.yaniarabena.com.ar/
3. Eloisa Cartonera Cooperative
La Boca District
Link: http://www.eloisacartonera.com.ar/
4. Evita Peron Museum
2988 Lafinur Street in the Palermo
Link: http://www.evitaperon.org/eva_peron_museum.htm
Christine Kirchner and Gaucho (© 2011 designhistory.org)
While macho gauchos rule on the Argentine pampas there is a decidedly female presence in the city of Buenos Aires. With the upcoming elections looming large the ubiquitous campaign posters of incumbent president Christina Fernandez de Kirchner remind us that Argentina had the first non-royal female head of state in the western hemisphere. In the 1940’s Evita Peron, wife and women’s rights advocate, established the first government humanitarian aid and social support programs for the struggling Argentine underclass. Today grandmother activists picket weekly to bring attention to their “disappeared” children and grandchildren, (victims of earlier police regimes). During our visit we decided that it was fitting to visit with Argentine women artists and designers of the city.
Marina Soria in her studio (© 2011 designhistory.org)
1. Marina Soria Studio (all images copyrighted)
Marina Soria is a calligrapher/artist who frequently is the sole Argentine (or for that matter South American) representative of her field to the outside world. She was first awakened to calligraphy as a fusion between her fine art painting and graphic design when a guest artist, Carole Johnson, demonstrated calligraphy in a graphic design class at the University of Buenos Aires. Soria was able study for a short time under Johnson who left behind a Xeroxed copy of a calligraphy instruction book when she returned to the US. (Books on calligraphy instruction were rare in Argentina)
Despite a successful career as a graphic designer in an advertising office and teaching typography and layout at the University of Buenos Aires Soria’s heart was yearning for calligraphy. In 1998 she traveled to San Diego to attend her first calligraphy conference where she took classes with Sheila Waters and Thomas Ingmire—all while 6 months pregnant with her third daughter. Describing Ms. Waters as the essential link between Europe and new world calligraphy, Soria has a deep admiration for Ms. Waters’s work and was thrilled for the chance to learn strong traditional calligraphic foundations. A complement to that traditional work was Soria’s study under Mr. Ingmire, a pioneer in experimental, non-traditional calligraphic styles. After these initial inspirations Soria continued her studies for the next 15 years later—including classes with Brody Neuenschwander, Ewan Clayton and a year of sumi-e brush painting and many more international workshops. She gravitates to free and expressive work—for her staying inside the geometry of traditional letterforms is “like trying to dance inside a cube.”
Teaching letterform and history (© 2011 designhistory.org)
We arrived at her Palermo district studio on a day full of diversions: two of her daughters had broken their collarbones on a recent ski trip and were just out of surgery, she had taught a class earlier in the day and she needed to get her third and youngest daughter to an appointment in a few hours. Nonetheless we had a lovely, unrushed visit (the sort of thing only an experienced mother and teacher can pull off). Marina’s studio space, an oasis of calm in the city, is open and light with several small rooms off to the sides of the main area. Her bookshelves are full of volumes about calligraphy, typography and art and her chalkboard was full of letter formation and stroke patterns drawn for her students. She prefers serious long-term students and her teaching is not in regularly scheduled classes but rather as individual projects executed on a cooperative schedule worked out between teacher and student. Once she was challenged to teach calligraphy to a fine artist who only wanted to know the forms of letters for a special project. While able to write a letter the student was not able to combine them into a word or a sentence. What Soria took away from that experience was that the essential basis of calligraphy is a system, not individual shapes, and she urges all calligraphers to get the system right before going off in experimental directions.
Details from Soria's piece "Russian Icon" for the Moscow Museum (© 2011 designhistory.org)
We asked her if there was a unique Argentine letterform, and if so what sets them apart from European? Soria answered that Jesuits brought their calligraphy from Europe since there were no indigenous Argentine scripts. The European gothic lettering was then blended with indigenous motifs.
The only precursor of calligraphy could be found in the ancient tradition of the flourishers, “el Arte de los Fileteadores,” or ‘arte porteno.’ This craft basically decorated and ornamented wagons, trucks and buses with fillets, calligraphic writings, specially gothic, flourishes and zoomorphic figures mixed with popular icons of the Argentine (such as the tango singer Carlos Gardel, patriotic symbols and religious motifs. [Check out Alfredo Geneovese’s site for a full explanation http://www.fileteado.com/index.php .] During the mid-1970’s the ornate letterforms were banned by the government as unreadable but now they are reemerging on restaurant signs and in touristy areas. Even if there are less examples of this art, “fileteado” is celebrated as a trend of Argentine style. These letterforms add to the period feel of downtown where one can still ride a wooden subway from 1910 and shop in elegant Victorian buildings.
el Arte de los Fileteadores
To promote calligraphy Soria and several others formed the first calligraphic group in South America, the Calligraphers of the Southern Cross (1997-2006). The group was instrumental in promoting calligraphy as an art as well as influenced several college design courses to include calligraphy in their curriculum. Despite a current surge in popularity there is no calligraphy collection in any major museum in Argentina. Soria’s work has been exhibited in the 2010 and 2011 National Textile Show, the International Book Fair in Argentina and in numerous art galleries. It is possible that her work is more known outside of Argentina where it has been shown in numerous important venues and is included in major museum collections in Berlin and Moscow. [For her exhibition list see http://www.marinasoria.com.ar/eng/muestras.html_]
Soria's Bovine Alphabet is derived from cattle brands used on the Argentine pampas (© 2011 designhistory.org)
Soria feels that the growing popularity of calligraphy comes from the “rarity of the human made mark. We are accustomed to machine-made marks and take their perfection for granted, however because we are human, with hands and eyes that need coordination, we appreciate when we see creations made by other humans. Whether it is dancing, playing a musical instrument or calligraphy, we know what our own anatomy is capable of performing and, from that reference point, we can gain respect for what other humans accomplish.”
Her biggest challenges come in the evolution and development of her personal style as well as not overly impressing her style on her students. She tells them, “Don’t worry as much about being good as being yourself.” For Soria, and for most calligraphers she knows, calligraphy is a spiritual pursuit, almost like a dedication to the OM. Certainly after our visit with Ms. Soria we were feeling centered, relaxed and content before we spilled back into the busy afternoon streets of Buenos Aires.
[That night we went tango dancing at a milonga (a dance hall with classes and free dancing sessions)... even on weeknights the milonga starts about midnight but the hour is fine since Argentine dinner is at 10 or 11pm. The food is terrific and inventive. Malbec is the drink of choice to accompany all of that Argentine meat. Then we flew to Salta for a week to experience both the amazing landscape and the Inca culture. No calligraphy but tons of handsome textiles, humitas, llama steak, more wine…)
Llamas!
2. Yani Arabena and Guille Vizzari
Yani and Gulle with their first sketch book and Love Saves the Day poster
Over coffee in a bookstore in Palermo with the young design team of Yani Arabena, a designer and calligrapher, and Guille Vizzari, a designer and typographer, we learned the genesis of couple’s collaborative work. Yani graduated from the University of Palermo, whereas Guille has a degree from the University of Buenos Aires. It was Yani (pronounced Johnny in English) who suggested the pair work collaboratively by sharing one sketchbook, one taking solo possession of the book for one week and then exchanging it with the other for a week. There were no restrictions other than they had to build upon the other’s work and could not remove any mistakes. About half way through the book their romance blossomed and enhanced their synergy. Now Yani initiates their joint projects alone with her calligraphy, leaving blank spaces for Guille to fill with illustration or hand lettering. Guille then scans and digitizes their hand drawn work into Illustrator, striving to maintain the freedom of the lines and calligraphy.
Since calligraphy was not offered in her school Yani was fortunate to have the opportunity to study under and then become the teaching assistant of Silvia Cordero Vega. Vega had studied under Brody Neuenschwander and it is easy to see their artistic influences in Yani’s work. For inspiration today Yani follows the work of a number of expressive designers, letterers and calligraphers; Jessica Hische, Marian Bantjes, Yves Leterme and Laura Varsky. On the traditional side she admires the work of John Stevens, Sheila and Julian Waters and to expand her knowledge base in traditional calligraphy she traveled to Camp Cheerio in North Carolina for a calligraphy camp in 2010 (www.calligraphycentre.com).
Y&G work on ceramics and magazine illustration (© 2011 Y&G Design)
Guille’s cites Herb Lubalin as one of his greatest influences, lamenting the fact that it is so difficult and expensive to get books of Lubalin’s work in Argentina (he especially desires to see Lubalin’s Blue Book in person). Because Guille has a firmer grasp on English he described to us the graphic design program and the teaching methods at the University. The department has an enrollment of 300 students, all attending entirely tuition free, and (from what we could understand) are all instructed in one large common area by numerous teachers. It is normal for design instructors to begin teaching for several years without receiving pay. The couple team-teach Typography I in the first year of the 4-year program off of the computer. Students use vinyl rubs down letters to learn technicalities of typography (anatomy, letter spacing, etc.) In the second semester computers are introduced for more experimental work. Another course named “morphology” covers composition, color and theory. Two semesters of the history of graphic design are required.
It was wonderful to meet these young designers who are so energized and committed. Their work has started to be recognized outside of Argentina, recently they participated in an exhibition of silkscreened posters at the Chicago Art Department (http://www.chicagoartdepartment.org/2011/03/powerinnumbers/). To Yani and Guille, color, energy and the rhythm of Argentine life sets their country’s typography and calligraphy apart from the rest of the world. When asked about the typography community in Argentina we are assured that typography and calligraphy are gaining a lot of interest through organizations dedicated to the profession. The first Argentine type conference Letter.2 was recently held in BA on October 4th and the largest design conference in South America, TMDG, occurs annually every October. Certainly if the energy and enthusiasm of Yani and Guille are indicative of the new generation of Argentine calligraphers and designers, Argentina cannot help but gain prominence in world design community.
(By the way if you are looking to hire a guest artist or teacher team, these two would love to work in Europe or the US. ) Thanks to Jason Urban of printeresting.org for suggesting this interview.
3. Eloisa Cartonera Cooperative
Demonstration of the cardboard binding, the exterior and Che poster
During the Argentine economic crisis of the early 2000′s a cooperative group, Eloisa Cartonera, developed a publishing model that changed the publishing scene in Argentina and inspired at least a dozen other similar publishing projects across Mexico, Central and South America. The premise is that books made from recycled materials can be produced at affordable prices. Each book is a unique creation with stenciled or hand-painted covers. The cooperatively produced cardboard covers and hand printed offset text pages reduce the sale price considerably lower than mainstream mass-produced books and making them available to a wider audience. The bulk of the texts are avant garde materials from Latin American writers from Argentina, Chile, México, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Brazil and Peru.
For a tiny store front in a lesser trafficked part of the city, Eloisa Cartonera has had plenty of press coverage and attention. On the day we ambled in a documentary team from Switzerland also arrived to discuss the various intricacies of procuring materials and producing the books. Here is what we gleaned from our Spanish comprehension and the Swiss filmmaker’s helpful translation:
A. Eloisa is the name of a past love interest of a founding member, however she was never a part of the group.
B. The material for the cardboard bindings is purchased from cartoneros, or garbage pickers. The pickers have been officially recognized by the city and given health care and job protection.
C. To be eligible for purchase the recycled cardboard must be clean and flat.
D. The cooperative obtains permission from the authors to publish their work with no fee.
The colorful interior book display of Eloisa Cartonera Cooperative
The place is a riot of color, the book covers, the painted walls and the decorations all lift you out of the griminess of the street outside. There is a definite insouciance about the production methods. Book interiors are stapled and glued and then covers are stenciled or hand lettered with paint. It is fast, fun and not the least precious. We bought a few books and later found that under the crude exterior was some exquisite writing.
Street Stencils and Carlos Cruz-Diez Installation at MALBA
4. Evita Peron Museum
Link: http://www.evitaperon.org/eva_peron_museum.htm
On our last day in BA we visited MALBA and Xul Solar museums but still felt compelled to find out more about the woman whose grave we had visited and whose name and face we’d seen numerous times during our stay. In contrast to Eva Peron’s mission to help the underprivileged her museum sits in a rather upscale neighborhood. On our afternoon walk to the museum we threaded our way through the mothers, nannies and chauffeurs picking up children who were being released from the local private kindergartens.
The museum is housed in an elegant mansion through which the exhibition travels from the ground floor up into many high ceilinged spaces. One begins in an almost empty room where a film of Evita’s burial is projected large onto a blank wall. This unnarrated introduction impresses the uninformed of the extent that the people of Argentina (that is the common people) worshipped their unelected representative in the government. The displays of crowds and flowers stunned us (for reference think of the funeral of Lady Dianne and ratchet it up a bit). To satisfy the popular demand Evita’s body laid in state for almost 2 weeks. The second Mrs. Peron threatened the mighty so much so that her dead body was then kidnapped and spirited off to an unmarked grave in Italy —but not until one of her fingers was cut off, her nose destroyed and several stab wounds were inflicted. Fear and loathing of a powerful woman can bring out the worst in the envious and weak.
Evita as cover girl actress and near her demise
Evita did what the government and the rich of Argentina failed to do —recognize and help the neediest and their children and for that she won their hearts. Because she was the impoverished and illegitimate daughter of a wealthly man many in the upper class consider her a revengeful gold digger (possibly corrupt) but honestly, does her background matter when she did so much good? And would someone please show me an elected official, anywhere in the world, that cannot be found corrupted on some level?
Goodbye Argentina, we hope to return again as soon as possible.
The World is their Oyster, Design in Portland, Oregon
August 19th, 2011 § 1 Comment
July, 2011
1. Flint Design
1231 NW Hoyt Street
Portland, Oregon 97209
Link:
2. Nike World Headquarters
Action Sports Division
One Bowerman Drive
Beaverton, Oregon
3. Lloyd Reynolds Exhibition
Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery
Reed College Library
3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland
Link:
Flint Design
While in Oregon we caught up with Professor Margaret Richardson who teaches History of Modern Design at Portland State University. Ms. Richardson, an eloquent speaker and author on art and design since the early 1980′s, has written for publications including Print Magazine, How, and U&lc and wrote Type Graphics (Rockport Publishers), 2000. Professor Richardson generously invited us to join her summer session students on two class trips, Flint Design and the Nike World Headquarters in nearby Beaverton.
Flint Design, owned by Catherine Healy, is located inside a nicely converted industrial building in the Pearl District of Portland. The firm specializes in packaging, servicing a number of local food manufacturers (the well-known Tillamook Creamery, Nancy’s Yogurt) and wine and beer producers, (Kona Brewing and several Willamette wineries). Catherine and her small band of designers offer a complete service flow: research, naming, identity, packaging, branding and marketing.
Catherine showed the extensive project books compiled for each client showcasing the research, inspiration and the logic behind a suggested design solution. Above all else we were most impressed with Catherine’s sophisticated and philosophical discussion of her process — plus her take on the practical aspects of working with clients over long-term relationships. ** Students take note, speaking about your work is not necessarily something you will learn in the classroom but it is one of the most important skills a designer can cultivate. **
[Since the next day was the start of the 4th of July weekend we took in the sights and tastes of Portland—Voodoo donuts, wine and cheese at local wineries, oysters at Pacific Seafood Company in Pacific City on the coast, picnics and walking in Bob Straub State Park, excellent restaurants everywhere. Plus roses in full bloom]
Nike World Headquarters
On the Tuesday after the 4th of July weekend we again joined the class, this time at the epicenter of the sports behemoth, Nike. The 200-acre Nike headquarters is hidden from public view, completely surrounded by a high earthen berm that is backed by dense rows of mature evergreen trees. The implication is clear—random visitors are not invited. One enters an arched gateway identified only by Nike’s red swoosh. The main entrance had a Taj Mahal like approach— centered upon a long rectangular pool of water. The campus unfolds ahead of you in a series of buildings, each named after a sports legends, (Tiger Woods, Mike Schmidt, Nolan Ryan, etc) surrounding a small lake. Sculptures and artwork abound. Everything is manicured, well maintained, and sparklingly rich.
We joined the class as they assembled in the Nolan Ryan building and were met by a PSU graduate and current branding director for Nike Action Sports, Damion Triplett. Damion guided us into a conference room where he introduced us to the work in his division—one of Nike’s smallest categories with “only” about 140 team members and 500 million in sales after almost 10 years of carefully building their brand. Mr. Triplett described their target market (snowboarders, skateboarders, surfers and BMX bikers) along with the challenges he faces compared to the more conventional sports divisions of Nike. Action sports clients are by nature, edgy and hip risk-takers, rapidly picking up and discarding trends. Because the entire process of product development and launch can take up to two years, Triplett and his team must be a combination of trend-spotters, design innovators and soothsayers.
Margaret Richardson, Damion Triplett, Nike Lake, No Finish Line
Triplett described a two-pronged approach to their marketing. One is periodic releases of short run collectible shoes that are only carried in smaller “mom and pop” stores. These releases are supported by special point-of-purchase displays—(he showed us an example of a hand-painted risers used for shoe display). High performing athletes, such as skateboarder Eric Koston, have been signed to endorse these limited editions. The second involves mass-market campaigns targeted across the entire action sports category. We viewed a number of the upcoming commercials, all featuring ‘rock star’ action sports figures but no product, only a Nike logo in the closing frames.
We viewed a number of handsome corporate manuals and sales manuals but Damion’s most impressive strengths lie in his agile and inventive problem solving skills. With a background in industrial design and theater set building he has learned to both plan ahead yet be adaptable to last minute curve balls, proving the value of a creative mind (even within the constraints of a corporate environment). The genre of action sports deals out a unique set of problems, for example retail store mannequins often have 6-pack abs and over-developed arms suitable for lines such as Abercrombie, etc but they do not fit the body type of a surfer or skateboarder; or edgy T-shirt slogans suitable for action sports types cause trouble in the main stream world (as in the case of a tee-shirt campaign using phrases such as “Get High,” “Ride Pipe,” which did not go down well with the Mayor of Boston.)
(Images from the nikeblog.com).
The team was gearing up for the Nike sponsored US World Cup of Surfing (the 2011 events concluded in August), an event that attracts tens of thousands of board shorts/bikini clad youth. It is likely that the event offered Damion a fair share of opportunities for surfing through his own problem solving.
We left Action Sports and Margaret’s class behind and walked across the campus, (treading over a “Nike, There is No Finish Line,” bronze sidewalk plaque) to the the Nike Department of Archives (DNA) exhibitions, “40 years of the Swoosh” and “The Bowerman Centennial.”
The celebration of the Swoosh anniversary included the release of 28-page booklet exclusively for “the benefit of Nike employees” but you can see it online at a number of sites, Slam online and a Steven Heller article , the complete logo story can also be read online.
The handsome centennial exhibit centered around a vitrine that held the original waffle iron used by Bill Bowerman to create his new, lightweight running shoe sole. Most of the shoe prototypes on exhibit were thought to have been lost but were unearthed during a construction project at Bowerman’s former home and workshop. The DNA staff were conducting a number of guest tours but when free they were very helpful in answering questions and offering information.
Waffle iron, an unearthed prototype, early waffle soles
The campus is not open to the general public but someone made a YouTube video which gives you a better idea of the facilities Finding America.
Lloyd Reynolds
A Life of Forms in Art
Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery
I was disappointed to learn I had missed the exhibition, A Life of Forms in Art, but I phoned to request to see the archives and was excited to learn that the exhibition was still hanging intact. An appointment was set and I drove to the green, leafy, summer-slumbering campus to see Reynold’s work. It is clear that Reynolds, an artist who had strong convictions and passions, expressed himself freely in his teaching which partly helped raise his calligraphy class to a “cult status.”(This was back when it was normal for a professor to express both cranky and loveable sides without fear of students slamming them on RateYourProfessor.com or end-of-the-semester class evaluations)
A self-taught calligrapher, Reynolds held a Masters of English Literature which explains his lifetime interest in the “three Bills: Blake, Morris and Shakespeare.” Former student Chuck Bigelow described Reynolds’s teaching as follows, ” calligraphy was the visible means of literate expression and, through that, a gateway to the history and lore of civilization. Moreover, it was a link between one’s own simple, utilitarian practice of handwriting and the accumulation of knowledge and scholarship through the ages.”
Notes on student work
Reynolds started teaching at Reed in 1929 but concentrated on calligraphy from 1949 through 1969. Some of the most influential type designers of the early digital era, including Sumner Stone and Chuck Bigelow, were introduced to letter design in Reynolds’s class. Reynolds built up an international reputation, was awarded many honors and starred in a 20-part series on italic calligraphy for public television. One of the episodes was playing on a large screen in the exhibition which was wonderful because you got to see the man in living action. A YouTube video clip discusses rhythm and gives you an idea of his thoughts on writing.
Reynolds demonstrates writing via video
Reynolds was a “William Morris Socialist according to the Stephanie Snyder, the Reed College Gallery director and curator of the show. It was fascinating to read about his experiences with J. Edgar Hoover. Because Reynolds had been a member of the Reed College Young Communist League the FBI summoned him to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee to “name names.” He refused, saying, “I am no hero, but I hate to get down on my knees unless I’m planting or looking for collar buttons.”
Reynolds also invented an improvisational calligraphic form he named “weathergrams.” These were haiku-like poems (10 words of less) drawn with ink onto small pieces of brown kraft paper. The weathergrams were hung on campus trees and allowed to weather through an entire season.
Our whole trip was 10 days but it flew by like a weekend. There is so much to see in Portland and the surrounding area. Luckily the next week we were at Wells College (in the finger lakes region of Aurora, New York) taking a summer class with Portland School of Art professor and master printer Barbara Tentenbaum. Although we’ve attended the Wells Summer Intensive several times previously, this time our eye was caught by an old poster (lettered by Lance Hidy) advertising a lecture by Reynolds at Radcliff in 1976. Small world.
The Glass House: A Rainy Day Tour
May 26th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Date of Visit : May 2011
Visitor Center
199 Elm Street
New Canaan, CT 06840
203.594.9884
Link: http://philipjohnsonglasshouse.org/
If we could count the number of times we’ve admired pictures of Philip Johnson’s Glass House over the past several decades the total would be well into the hundreds. When it opened for tours a few years ago we very much wanted to see the real thing however a flood of public interest meant that tickets for the May to November season sold out almost as soon as they were made available. Luckily this year was different and we were able to purchase tickets for a 3:30 tour on a Monday near the end of May.
Your visit must start at the Glass House visitor center located directly across the street from the New Canaan train station. If you arrive by car, parking can be found in a nearby municipal lot. The basic tour takes about an hour and a half at the cost of $30 per person and operates in all weather conditions. The day of our visit it was raining on and off so umbrellas were generously provided. A comfortable shuttle bus transported the small group for the 8-minute trip and dropped us off inside the front gate.
Front Gate (all images by Eric Allen, c. Designhistory.org)
Johnson closed his drive from road traffic with a gate that consisted of an aluminum ship’s boom suspended horizontally between two tall masonry pillars. The engineering necessary to raise and lower the boom reportedly was quite difficult to solve. Our group murmured with approval but, apart from the function, we did not think the visual aspects worked as well.
Da Monsta Reception Building and a view of Johnson's office from inside Da Monsta
On one side of the drive is a small red and black Postmodern style building, composed of unusual angles and curves, reminiscent of the work of Frank Gehry. On the opposite side, a bit further off, sits a nineteenth century clapboard farmhouse. The property is populated with numerous buildings of radically different styles and functions. Do not arrive expecting to see a site dedicated to Modernism, instead realize that Johnson, with family money and substantial shares in Alcoa, had the wherewithal to indulge in diverse architectural experiments and follies.
The Glass House, not visible from the gate, appears after a short walk down a gently sloping drive and past some strategically trimmed evergreen trees. On first sighting the house is fronted by a large circular sculpture by Donald Judd, a dry laid stone wall, a red brick guest house, and small grassy lawn crisscrossed by neat gravel paths. The effect is atmospheric and contemplative, perhaps more so due to the misty weather conditions of that day.
Our guide wisely let us wander about the house for a few minutes before she made her presentation, knowing that we would look and not listen at first encounter with the architectural icon. Some of our random observations; stark yet comfortable, quietly masculine, leather covered tables and leather tiles on the bathroom ceiling. The touches of white in the plush rug, bed cover, window shades and statue of two voluptuous women saved the place from serious brown overload. Kitchen cabinets were delaminating in spots and seemed inadequate for realistic cooking. It was explained that cooking was pretty low on the list of functions in this space and other buildings on the property would be used for dinner parties, etc.
Barcelona Chairs designed by Lily Reich and Mies van der Rohe
Johnson likened a stay in the Glass House to a camping trip; a place to interact intimately with nature. There is neither air-conditioning nor are there screens on the four doors that open on each side of the house. In warm weather bugs are invited to cohabitate in the space, seemingly at odds with the mathematical, machine aesthetic of the Modern Movement. The mechanics are invisible. The sub floor heat, piped underground from the nearby brick guesthouse, was probably inadequate for a structure that is separated from the elements with a single pane glass walls.
View from back lawn
The view from inside is fantastic. Tall trees trunks frame a pond with a pavilion and a large sculpture on the hill beyond. All of the grounds are beautiful, especially the open unmown fields. Our small and practical mind had pedestrian questions, such as how often the windows were washed. We were informed that it was once a week, alternating inside and outside.
Tea pavilion on the pond
The earliest concept for a glass-sided dwelling did not originate with Johnson, Mies van der Rohe had designed a similar structure for the Farnsworth House which he exhibited in a model at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947 (although the building was not realized until 1951). Johnson credited Mies for the inspiration when he built his Glass House first in 1949 but, understandably, preempting Mies project caused tensions in their relationship. Feelings couldn’t have been too badly damaged because Johnson’s house is a showcase for the Barcelona and Brno chairs by Mies and his design collaborator Lily Reich. (Note: Mies had a much more difficult experience with his own glass-walled building—his client sued him and Frank Lloyd Wright severely criticized his design.)
In the foreground, the brick Guest House
The swimming pool
Upon exiting the Glass House we were told that the brick guesthouse was closed due to discovery of toxic black mold. Our tour then moved up a path to a spot that allowed a direct frontal view of the house. This vantage point brought the round swimming pool, intensely bright turquoise, into prominence. We wonder if changing the surface to a gray or slightly more natural color would be an improvement.
Further down the path sits the entrance to the underground bunker that functioned as Johnson’s painting gallery. The windowless (and freezing cold) space was filled with his collection of over-scale Modern paintings. Only a few were visible, others were hidden on panels that rotated 360 degrees. We did catch a glimpse of a handsome Warhol portrait of Johnson, the only likeness of the owner that we saw on the property.
Outside, we moved onto a sculpture gallery roofed with metal trusses and glass panes that allowed natural light to flow down onto the art collection. Unfortunately the rain also flowed in, rusting the beams and gathering in small puddles on the floor. It’s only possible to peer over a railing to see art on the lower levels and ceramics in a distant gallery.
Sculpture Gallery Ceiling
Sculpture Gallery Interior
On our return to the gate the guide discussed Johnson’s separate office building, or office hut. The whimsical combination of geometric shapes, with a conical top and chocolate-brown exterior, looks like a child’s playhouse. Below the office is a ghost-structure of a greenhouse that was used for growing peonies by Johnson’s life partner, David Whitney.
What we did not see was Johnson’s dramatic nighttime lighting of the house. Thanks to the work of the local high school students, it has been recorded and posted on-line.
We took the van back to the visitor center and gift shop where we chatted a bit more with our guide. The entire staff was terrific, friendly and knowledgeable. We believe that Mr.Johnson would have approved of the way his legacy is being preserved and presented.
Afterwards we drove north to Hyde Park, New York, where we indulged in a French meal in the Escoffier Restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America. We were seated in front a large glass wall, but this time the view was not Johnson’s arboreal landscape, instead it was of 16 student chefs working hard to prepare our delicious meal.
Viennese Spring: A Design Torte
April 8th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Date of Visit: March 2009
1. Viennese Secessionist Building
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Link: http://www.secession.at/e.html
2. MAK – Austrian Museum for Applied Art / Contemporary Art
1, Stubenring 5
Link: http://www.mak.at/e/jetzt/f_jetzt.htm
3. The Belvedere Museum
Prinz-Eugen-Straße 27, 1030 Vienna
Link: http://www.belvedere.at/jart/prj3/belvedere/main.jart?rel=en
4. Vienna State Opera
Opernring 2, Vienna A-1010
Link: http://www.vienna-opera.com/?gclid=CIqSt63zgqgCFQTe4AodJzhrZg
5. Sigmund Freud Museum
Berggasse 19, 1090 Vienna
Link: http://www.freud-museum.at /cms/
Tante Liesl, a cousin demonstrates Austrian snacking, Gothic Snuff, and a walk around Golling
After strudel, schnapps and (for some) snuff, Tante Liesl sometimes reminisces about her youth growing up on the grounds of Villa Lehenhof in Scheibbs, near Vienna. Her father was the estate manager for her great aunt Martha and husband Viktor Thonet (one of the famous Thonet brothers of the furniture company). Martha is fondly remembered for occasionally treating her nieces to a lovely meal in the Villa or a trip to Vienna. That life came to an end in 1945 when the nieces and their mother fled the invading Russians “on the last train out” with a live goose and few possessions. The family eventually settled in the alpine village of Golling-Abtenau, near Salzburg. One sister moved to Kitzbuhel and the other to the United States.
Vienna is situated only about 3 ½ hours east of Golling yet we must have visited 20 times before we finally got around to making the trip to the Imperial city. Traveling east, the mountains flatten and the famous woods take over the landscape. In contrast to the charming quaintness of Salzburg, Vienna, once capital of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, retains the formalities of the Habsburg Dynasty. Despite a long and turbulent history and hardships after WW2, the contemporary Viennese still enjoy the elegant culture of opera and coffee houses much the same as their predecessors.
The Secessionist building entrance, side elevation and wearing a mustache.
Day 1 The Secessionist Building and The Sacher Café
Vienna was a center of early 20th century intellectual movements, psychology and radical art manifestos, all of which are now documented in excellent museums. The first on our list was the Vienna Secessionist Exhibition Hall for Contemporary Art, built by the government for the upstart artists who broke from the traditional academy. It sits almost directly across the street from the older art school yet no two places could have been more different philosophically or physically. The academy, a Renaissance revival, is outshone by its neighbor— a brilliantly white and gold edifice. Completed in 1898 the boxy structure is topped with an ornate golden dome and decorated on the exterior walls with symbolic images undulating in art nouveau style.
The exterior announces the intentions of the tenants. Over the front door are masks of the three Gorgons, symbolizing sculpture, architecture and plastik (textiles, furniture, metalwork, crafts, etc.). One of the Secessionists’ beefs with the academy was over the inclusion of designed objects as artwork — the academy narrowly focused on painting and sculpture. The Secessionist credo, “Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit” (“For every time its art. For art its Freedom”) announces that this place is not for historical retreads.
Secessionist Architect Joseph Maria Olbrich was harshly critiqued for the building design—”a bastard between a temple and warehouse, Temple for Bullfrogs, A Temple of the Anarchic Art Movement, a mausoleum, a Pharaoh’s Tomb, a crematorium, and a cross between a greenhouse and a blast furnace.” Despite the criticisms, a limited 10-year lease and serious bombing damage during WW2 the building has survived. Today contemporary artists show their work in the large, naturally lit galleries on the main floor. Artists are encouraged to use the building as canvas and during our visit the façade sported a large black mustache.
Aside from the building itself we were interested in viewing the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt. Originally painted for temporary installation in 1902, it also has survived some rough treatment —being cut into seven pieces, stored in a furniture warehouse, sold to a private collector, taken into “state custody”, resale and restoration to finally rest in a basement gallery. Here you can really immerse yourself in viewing the work. A bench is provided for sitting as is written material which helps in decoding the abundant symbolism.
Beethoven Frieze and detail
The museum has a nice book and gift shop but no food and we were getting hungry. There are nearby restaurants but we decided to take cousin Crystal’s advice to go to the Café Sacher for a nice slice of Sacher-Torte and a glass of Prosecco. The afternoon crowd was a mixture of Viennese locals and foreign tourists. After eating we viewed the cake bakery in action…definitely a treat in itself. We remembered an old gift, an “eine kleine torte guard,’” proffered years before by fellow designers as a joke before we left for our annual trip to Austria. Even if handy at that moment it would not have deterred us from the chocolate treat.
Baker icing the tortes, inside the Cafe Sacher, Eine Kleine Torte Guard (Patent Pending)
Day 2
MAK Museum, Austrian Museum for Applied Art / Contemporary Art
The Vienna State Opera
Vienna is divided into 23 districts, the historic central district one is encircled by the Ringstrasse Road and trolley lines. It was fun taking the trolley to the MAK and the 3-day pass insured we’d be able to hop on and off endlessly during our visit. (The massive MAK also sponsors the Academy of Applied Arts, alma mater of graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister). We can usually knock off a museum in a few hours but the wealth of design artifacts held us captivated for an entire day. First we viewed the exhibitions of Gothic, Renaissance, Empire and Biedermeier periods. Then we lingered in the extensive Wiener Werkstatte Archive of furniture, metal, glass and ceramics. Work by Hoffmann, Dagobert Peche, Kolomon Moser and other Werkstatte members is in abundance. For most of our visit we were the only presence in the large exhibition hall—it was easy to linger and read the well-written explanations.
The Jugendstil, Art Deco room contains Gustv Klimt’s designs for the Stocklet Frieze and a good number of pieces by Rennie Macintosh and Margaret McDonald. In 1902 McDonald painted a frieze for Fritz Waerndorfer, the wealthy textile merchant who joined Hoffmann and Moser in founding the Werstatte. It was the first time we’d seen the built up gesso she used under the undulating lines of her paintings in person. Scholars are quick to say that McDonald was influenced by Klimt but if you look at her early work you might think the reverse.
The chair exhibition at the MAK, a view of the MAK exterior from inside the trolley
Our favorite installation was the exhibition of chair interpretations spanning a period of 100 years by the likes of Hoffmann, Wagner, Adolf Loos (and Tante’s Liesl’s great uncle’s family), the Thonets. The unique display included a corridor of chairs shown in silhouette—able to be viewed in full dimension on the reverse side. It was wonderfully theatrical yet logical design.
More theatrical effects were enjoyed later that evening at the Viennese State Opera that, despite bring non-tourist season and a weeknight. was played to a sold out house. From our balcony seat we could drink in the stage and the entire audience.
Vienna State Opera from the balcony
Day 3
The Belvedere Museum,
Freud Museum
We bundled up against the cold damp and cloudy early spring day. The trolley ride was a bit further to The Belvedere Museum but it is definitely worth the distance. The museum is spilt between two magnificent buildings, the upper, and lower palaces. The upper holds the work of Gustav Klimt, including his painting The Kiss, which can also be seen everywhere in Vienna slathered over all things commercial. Whoever says the arts don’t contribute to the economy is sadly mistaken! Additionally the paintings of Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and other leaders in the Viennese modern movement are on display.
The Belvedere Museum, The Power of Ornament Poster, Klimt Knick-nack
We strolled down to the Lower Belvedere to two special exhibits of interest, one devoted to Alphonse Mucha and the other, The Power of Ornament. The Mucha show encompassed his oeuvre as a commercial and decorative artist, complete with painting, drawings pastels and photographs. His posters are even more impressive in person than in reproductions. We had not previously seen Mucha’s occult interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer in his book, Le Pater. While we appreciated Mucha’s amazing technique and understood his reverent intention, the work eminated rather haunting undertones. You can see the entire Le Pater online.
Mucha Poster Detail, Page from Le Pater
The second show, The Power of Ornament, was beautifully curated by Sabine Vogel. An introduction reminds us of the writing of Adolf Loos, his beliefs that decoration held back civilization and entrapped objects in a style that would be outmoded as public taste evolved. Loos’s arguments are countered by those of Siegfried Kracauer who felt that decoration was an important expression of societal structure. Although not originally part of our agenda, the show was refreshing and thought provoking. There is a video of the curator and work from the show on an archived web site.
The final stop of the day was the Sigmund Freud Museum. It was nice to take a break from design. It was amazing to walk through the small and modest rooms in which Freud developed his landmark theories of the workings of the unconscious mind. The biographical displays explaining Freud’s early neurological work and later experimentation with cocaine as a therapeutic drug were fascinating. Freud and his family inhabited this address until 1938 when he fled the Nazis. The door sign, the waiting room and his walking stick were all left behind but the famous couch went to England. Nevertheless a few years earlier, Abbott Miller had designed an exhibition for the Musuem, The Couch: Thinking in Repose. “The couch exhibition is an attempt, beyond veneration or stereotypical Freud critique, to focus on something that seems like a minor detail. It was Freud, after all, who recommended directing attention toward trivialities as a methodological principle.” No longer on view you can read an account of the exhibit.
Freud waiting room, sans serif with a drop shadow, a sexual reference?
We received a phone calling notifying us that the rest of our party had come home from skiing in the Alps (because of a lack of snow) and noticed we were missing. Sadly the time had come to return to Golling and then the US. Hopefully there would be a future opportunity to return to Vienna and see the rest of her treasures. We boarded the train (sans goose) and watched for the mountains to come back into view.
Design Traveler on the path home, Skiiers return to their indoor activities.
Bauhaus Trifecta : The Three Bauhaus Museums in Germany
March 4th, 2011 § 1 Comment
1. Bauhaus Museum, West Berlin
Date of Visit : 1983
Address: Klingelhöferstr. 14 10785 Berlin
Link: http://www.bauhaus.de/english/index.htm
2. Bauhaus Museum, Weimar
Date of visit: 2007
Address: Theaterplatz 1, 99423 Weimar Theaterplatz D – 99423 Weimar
Link: http://www.das-bauhaus-kommt.de/en/ausstellung.php
3. Bauhaus Museum, Dessau
Date of visit : May, 2007
Address: Gropiusalle 38, Dessau
Link: http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/index.php?en
1. Bauhaus Archives, Berlin, 1983
As many of you probably already know, the German art school, the Bauhaus, started in Weimar, flourished in Dessau and closed in Berlin. Today there is a museum at each site but in 1984, when we first visited the West Berlin location, it was forbidden to travel to East Germany. That was the era of The Wall, machine gun patrols and tedious hours at Checkpoint Charlie to visit the Pergamon in East Berlin. East Berlin was still riddled with bullet holes left from WWII and restaurants had menus with only about 25% of the printed offerings available. It all seemed so entrenched— it never entered our minds that in a few years there would be a free unified Germany.
In West Berlin, the Bauhaus Archive was designed by architect Walter Gropius, the school’s founder. Originally planned for Darmstadt it was erected in the Berlin’s Tiergarten district between 1976 and 1979. Set apart on its own plot of ground, the strikingly unusual roofline of repeated curved shapes is easily spotted. One enters the museum via a long curvaceous ramp leading you between the two main structures and sweeping you into the entrance. Unbelievably someone has filmed the walk and placed it on youtube …
Even though the building was relatively new, at closer range the exterior was showing a bit of weathering. Inside the spaces were more conventional, and rather small—the exhibition contained entirely on the ground floor. The day we visited the museum was busy but it was still possible to see the work of the students and teachers without strain. (Certainly no where near as frustrating as wading through the vast mobs at the Bauhaus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC in 2010).
Described as the largest single collection of Bauhaus artifacts, the exhibit includes ceramics, furniture, sculpture, weaving, printing, bookbinding and our favorite, collage. There is a good selection of works by students and their teachers—Kandinsky, Itten, Schlemmer, Feininger, Albers and Klee. Every Bauhaus period is covered through either products or their prototypes for mass production, furniture, lamps, and chairs. Major highlights include Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair and cantilever chairs, leather and wicker armchairs from Mies van der Rohe and the famous Bauhaus table lamp designed by Wilhem Wagenfield. In the architecture section several hundred works are displayed along with models for the Fagus factory and the Dessau Bauhaus building.
There is a gift shop where you can buy books and various Bauhaus products as well as a cafe with Bauhaus decor. We chose to refresh ourself elsewhere with a local speciality, Berliner Weisse, a beer flavored with raspberry syrup. YUM!
(The Wall came down in 1989 opening East Germany—most importantly to us, Weimar and Dessau.)
2. Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, 2006
The Weimar Bauhaus Museum sits quietly in a pedestrian zone across from a theater, watched over by a statue of Schiller and Goethe. The building, a former coach house, is coated in soft pink, nestling comfortably into the cityscape. (FYI The museum will be relocated elsewhere in 2014.)
Again an extensive exhibition of work by students and their teachers from its beginning in 1919. A short film covers the history of the Bauhaus in Dessau. Included are works from the Bauhaus predecessor, an earlier design school organized by Henry van de Velde in 1907. It is astounding how much work, some of it quite fragile, survived from the short 6 years that the Bauhaus operated in Dessau (considering the havoc of World War II and the political turmoil that followed). Less crowded and more serene than Berlin, this was worth the visit. There is a nice book shop and store.
Afterwards we left the Modern world behind to visit the nearby Goethe House.
3. The Bauhaus Museum, Dessau, 2006
World Heritage Site
In the film Bauhaus: The Face of the 20th Century, a former student laughs about how the Weimar Bauhaus students painted the statue of Schiller and Goethe red. That sort of radical behavior and dangerous political currents precipitated the Bauhaus’s move to Dessau in 1925. The school was eager to forge liaisons with industry which made the heavily industrial city of Dessau a good fit. Although not as picturesque (by a long shot) as Weimar, this is where the Bauhaus really flourished and the architectural innovations and design theories were executed as real building projects.
It felt a little surreal parking in a lot a few hundred feet from the famous sign. At that time the exterior facade was covered with scaffolding—repairs were underway with the influx of money from reunification. There were no tours available that day but we were pretty much free to wander around. The building was deserted, we could drink in the details of the fixtures, railing, especially the window treatments in this machine for learning. It felt somewhat familiar because so many of the (then innovative) building features are commonplace today.
At the completion of our Bauhaus pilgrimage we drove off to Lutherstadt Wittenberg to visit the Martin Luther Museum. With so much renovation in progress the choice of guest-ready hotels was limited. The one we found had a delightful surprise, original handles designed by Walter Gropius in our room and about the building. At breakfast the next morning the owner told us that he was preparing to sell the originals — he needed the money to pay for the renovations and there was a great demand for original Bauhaus fixtures. He had no particular love for the handles, the mere fact that he never had the money to renovate before reunification had saved these Bauhaus artifacts.
If you plan to visit Bauhaus sites in Dessau, someone has nicely placed all of the vital info on how to get around by public transportation.
http://www.creen.demon.co.uk/travel/dessau.html
Link to info on the Master’s Houses
http://www.meisterhaeuser.de/en/index.html
Website for all Bauhaus locations in Germany
http://bauhaus-online.de/en
Centraal Museum Utrecht and Rietveld Schröder House
February 17th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Centraal Museum Utrecht and Rietveld Schröder House, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Date of Visit: Spring Break, March 2004
Address: Nicolaaskerkhof 10, Utrecht
Link: Centraal Museum http://www.centraalmuseum.nl
Link: Rietveld Schröder House: http://www.rietveldjaar.nl
Link: Rietveld iPhone app http://www.appstorehq.com/rietveld-iphone-268734/app)
The 2010 International Rietveld Year concluded on January 30th but we’d like to reminisce about a past visit to the Centraal Museum and the Rietveld Schröder House. We realize that 2004 is ancient history—pre-Rietveld iPhone app and pre-virtual tour of Reitveld Schröder House—but the experience of actually visiting Rietveld’s work is probably pretty much the same.
We traveled by train from Amsterdam to Utrecht, a half hour trip that speeds by when you are traveling with a fellow designer who is an excellent conversationalist. Utrecht is a town dominated by the red brick buildings and orderliness. Nice buses ran on schedule but we opted for a taxi—time was short.
Design Travel Companion and Excellent Conversationalist
First stop was the museum, home of the world’s largest Rietveld collection. Upon entering we were awash in design: clean architecture, pretty banners and clear signage, all sorts of design touches including the Victor & Rolf designed denim suits worn by the staff.
Housed in a former medieval cloister, the museum consists of several buildings with a central courtyard. We made our ways through the well-organized displays, enjoying the almost visitor-free galleries. There were plenty of excellent examples of early 20th graphic design, De Stijl, Dada, etc. A number of design icons evoked a ‘so-that-is-what it-really-looks-like’ reaction. After seeing so many printed and digital reproductions we still feel that technology cannot replace personal observation.
How exciting it must have been to be part of the early 20th century avant-garde movement. A lot of energy and idealism was expressed through simple and cheap materials. There were pieces made from magazine and yellowed newspaper clippings that had faded—some of this work was made for the moment, not necessarily planned to be forever embalmed in a museum.
Professor Ocko’s eagle eye spotted a famous piece, usually attributed jointly to Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg, but here identified as solely as van Doesburg’s. The framing was a little suspect but who could question the attribution? Sorry the label is probably not legible; you’ll have to take our word for it.
Our main objective was to see Gerrit Rietveld’s work. The museum web site states that Rietveld “designed much more than only the classic Red-Blue chair and the famous Rietveld Schröder House. Rietveld realized more than one hundred buildings and many pieces of furniture.” Although currently an expanded exhibition, at the time of our visit there was less Rietveld. Most of the examples were from the 1920′s. The clunky appearance came partly from his use of standardized wood measures intended for mass production. His dual objectives of expressing the de Stijl philosophy and modularity were met—comfort appeared to be a lower priority. The big star, his chair, looks sweet and diminutive, like children’s furniture, especially as it was located near to his design for a child’s wagon.
Design Traveler & THE chair.
The chair is small but not as small as a recent reproduction by Maarten Meerman from Vancouver. (via Design boom)
Lunch was in the museum’s cafe—a combination sandwich/salad of smoked fish that you ate with a fork and knife — before hustling over to the Rietveld House. The building, commissioned by Truus Schröder-Schräder, is the only piece of architecture ever realized from the De Stijl movement. When we arrived we were disappointed to learn that the house was not open. We peeked into windows and photographed the outside, apparently the sort of behavior that Ms. Schröder-Schräder had to deal with endlessly when she inhabited the building. The house is situated at the end of a long block of traditional brick houses. I couldn’t help but wonder what the neighbors thought when they saw the radical new addition to their street. Fortunately we can see what me missed via a nice virtual tour. http://www.rietveldschroderhuis.nl/rondleidingEng.jsp
We returned to Amsterdam by train, energized like fans who’d seen one of their favorite movie stars. The day had been well spent . Some great images from the exhibition and house can be see on Designboom
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/11064/rietveld-year.html
