Elegant Bookcase for a Fashionable Regency Library

Library Bookcase March 1812

Loretta reports:

I set quite a few scenes in libraries, mainly because, by the time of my stories, they had become a family gathering place. Furthermore, in many great houses, these were large, comfortable rooms, often fitted out less formally than say, the drawing room. The one I used in A Duke in Shining Armor is a good example.

While bookcases, complete with writing desk, might appear in various rooms, this one seems to need quite a large room. And even if the library already has miles of bookshelves, those of us who love books can always use storage space for more.

I was particularly struck by the tambour circular cupboards, because (a) while horizontal tambour is fairly common, the circular vertical style is much less so, and (b) one of my own favorite pieces of furniture is a mid-20th century dressing table that has this feature.

Bookcase description

Images from Ackermann's Repository for March 1812, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, via Internet Archive.

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The Geffrye Museum of the Home

Ornamental glass lustres c. 1880

Caughley Tea Service c. 1780

Loretta reports:

Instead of the usual Friday video, I’m offering a tour of the Geffrye Museum of the Home, which my husband and I visited during our time in London. The draw for me was the series of period rooms.

As Susan and I have often lamented, it’s much easier to find paintings and prints of exteriors than interiors. The Geffrye offers a chance to view some interiors and, especially, to notice the way home life changed over time. These aren’t the homes of aristocrats, but, with the exception of the almshouses, of well-off families of the professional classes.

With the museum closed for development until 2020, I invite you to check out the panoramas and the virtual tour offered on the website—which I supplement with these photographs from our visit.

Photographs by Walter M. Henritze
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Friday Video: Automaton Dulcimer Player

Loretta reports:

Susan and I have shown you quite a few automatons and clockwork devices over the years. This one came to my attention via a newspaper advertisement by fabulous antique emporium M.S. Rau Antiques. If I ever get to New Orleans, that will be one of my first stops.

This dulcimer player may have inspired the more famous one belonging to Marie Antoinette, which Susan reported on a while back.

Video: Rare Automaton Dulcimer Player from M.S. Rau Antiques

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Friday Video: The Gold Singing Bird Egg Basket

Loretta reports:

We Two Nerdy History Girls are partial to automata and other clockwork devices. Among numerous other marvels, I’ve shown you the singing bird pistols that inspired a scene for one of my novellas, and surviving clockwork items originally exhibited in London in 1807.

Susan has brought you—to name only two of many—a rope dancer and an automaton watch.

Searching the tags “scientific marvels” and “automaton” will bring up more posts on these ingenious devices.

Today, I offer you an egg.

Video: Gold Singing Bird Egg Basket from M.S. Rau Antiques

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The Wallace Collection

Loretta reports from London:

Though I had already put the Wallace Collection on my list of must-sees, the enthusiasm of our guide on a Marylebone walking tour led us to seek it out sooner rather than later.

As we came through the entrance, I think my head snapped back, and I had an image of myself with my eyes popping out of my head like a cartoon character. I've been to quite a few stately homes and museums, but I must say that none quite matched the visual impact of this. Though no photos can fully capture the experience, these will, I hope, offer a sense of the house. I also urge you to explore the website.

Meanwhile, we have our fingers crossed that time and circumstances will allow us to go back before we have to leave London.

A Cabinet (of Curiosities?) for December 1828

1828 Cabinet

1828 Cabinet description

Loretta reports:

As we’ve seen, a great deal of Regency and Romantic era design does not operate on the principle of Less is More. This cabinet is a fine example of the Decorated-Within-An-Inch-of-Its-Life mode. It’s also the kind of piece I might find myself using in a scene: the little drawers and pigeonholes, the objects sitting on top, and who knows what below, behind the doors …

1828 Cabinet Description

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Friday Video: Recreating an 18thc Agateware Teapot

Isabella reporting,

Recreating an object from the past using the original methods is one of the best ways to understand both the object itself as well as the complexity of the process. It also provides a fresh appreciation for the skill of the original tradespeople, as well as the amount of time (and imagination) that went into making things by hand in the pre-mechanized era.

This novelty agateware teapot from the Victoria & Albert Museum was made in Staffordshire c1750-1765. It was intended to resemble natural agate stone with a swirling effect achieved through layering multicolored clay. The scallop shell shape was created by pressing a thrown base into a mold cast from actual shells, with additional pieces like the spout, handle, and lid made and added separately.

That's the short version of how the teapot was made. This video features Michelle Erickson, who was Ceramic Resident: World Class Maker at the V&A in 2012,  recreating a replica of the original teapot,  and showing exactly how labor-intensive that 18thc process was.

Above: Teapot, maker unknown, c1750-1765, Victoria & Albert Museum.

A Beautiful Needle Lace Sampler, 1795

Isabella reporting,

Last week I visited one of my favorite places, Winterthur Museum, and among the current exhibitions is Embroidery: The Language of Art. Our readers know that embroidery is one of my absolute favorite things, and this exhibition had plenty of examples to make me ooh and ahh.

For most modern people, the word "sampler" means cross-stitched letters and designs. It can be that, yes, but a sampler can also feature all kinds of needlework, from decorative stitching to darning stitches and even the so-called plain stitches used to construct clothing and household goods. Most samplers were worked by schoolgirls as they learned the various stitches. Not only were the samplers an educational tool, but they could become a kind of record of stitches for future projects. If a sampler was decorative as well, then it could also be proudly displayed by the girl's family as proof of her newly-acquired expertise.

The identity of this sampler's maker is now sadly lost beyond her initials, but her exquisite workmanship remains. Worked in a school in the Philadelphia area, the sampler features both traditional embroidery stitches and needle lace to create a stylized basket of flowers, a motif popular with embroiderers in many different cultures. The sampler is worked in silk thread on linen. (As always, please click on the images to enlarge them.)

Needle lace, sometimes called Dresden work, involves cutting or drawing away parts of the supporting fabric and then using the needle to weave elaborate patterns to fill in the empty spaces. This example must have required phenomenal skill and patience from its young maker. The needle lace sections are done with very tiny stitches - the geometric circles shown in the details are only about 1-1/2" in diameter. (The pink backing is modern to provide contrast.)

Yet there's an unmistakable exuberance and joy to the design as well. Too often fine embroidery seems like drudgery to 21st century eyes, but a piece like this is clearly as much an expression of the young needleworker's imagination as a painting might have been. You can see her enjoyment in her design and her pride in the precision of her stitches. How fortunate her work has survived so we can enjoy it, too!

Winterthur will be hosting a needlework conference in connection with this exhibition on October 14-15, 2016. Entitled Embroidery: The Language of Art, the conference speakers will include international experts on needlework as well as hands-on workshops in the needle arts. Click here for the conference brochure for more information.

Above: Sampler, by "M.S.", worked in the Delaware Valley, 1795. Winterthur Museum.

A Beautiful Bed with (Perhaps) a Political Agenda, c.1805

Isabella reporting,

Loretta has shared many examples (such as these here and here) of furnishings from the pages of Ackermann's Repository, showing what was "on trend" for fashionable homes in early 19thc Great Britain.

I was reminded of those illustrations when I recently spotted the bed, left, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With its swooping curves, gleaming mahogany, ebony, and rosewood, brass inlay, and elaborate (reproduction) hangings, the bed could have been straight from the pages of Ackermann's. There's one difference, however. It wasn't made in London, but in New York.

According to the bed's placard:

"Following the Revolution, Americans took inspiration from the ancient empires of Greece and Rome in the establishment of a democratic republic. In turn, domestic interiors and furnishings began to resemble architecture and artifacts from classical antiquity. This bed's sweeping frame echoes the form of a Roman lectus (daybed) and the bronze plaque at the base bears the profile of a Roman magistrate or military officer."

In other words, this bed wasn't just a stylish piece of furniture: it was making a patriotic statement. Eagles and stars appear throughout American design of the period, and combined with the ancient Roman design, this bed was a thorough expression of Federalist sensibilities.

Or perhaps not. Although it was made in New York, the maker was a Frenchman, Charles-Honoré Lannuier. One of the city's foremost furniture makers, Lannuier employed his Parisian cousin, Jean-Charles Cochois, around the time this bed was made. Cochois would have brought with him the latest in Parisian designs inspired by the newly-created French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon, too, wanted to create a new country with all the trappings of ancient Rome, but of a Roman empire rather than a Roman republic. So are the aggressive eagles on this bed republican American eagles, or imperial French ones?

One more thought: to the early 19thc customer commissioning this bed, the political and bellicose overtones of its design would have been a selling point. Today's consumers, however, prefer their beds to be a bit less menacing. While this style of classically-inspired bed - without the eagles and inlay - is once again very popular, savvy modern manufacturers call them sleigh beds - conjuring up cozy images of fresh snow, warm blankets, and sleigh bells instead of stern Roman military officers plotting their next conquest.

Above: Bedstead, by Charles-Honoré Lannuier and Jean-Charles Cochois, c.1805-8. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
Photographs ©2016 Susan Holloway Scott.

Friday Video: The Singing Bird Pistols & Their Restoration

Loretta reports:

Readers familiar with my short story, “Lord Lovedon’s Duel,” (from the Royally Ever After duet) will remember the Singing Bird Pistols. I’ve shown the pistols in operation in a previous blog. What I didn’t realize was how much restoration work went into making them look like this.

Today's video tells the incredible story of that restoration (you may have to overlook the highly energetic introduction & music).

You can watch the same program without the noisy TV intro here on Vimeo.
In both cases, you will notice some odd spelling in the subtitles. Ever wonder how this happens? I sure do. Hello? Dictionary?

Many thanks to reader Kafryn W Lieder for sending me the link!

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square

Lansdowne House 1811

Loretta reports:

By now everybody’s aware of my fascination with lost architecture. Unlike Northumberland House, Lansdowne House isn’t completely lost. A still-impressive piece of it remains in Berkeley Square, as the home of the Lansdowne Club,*

from 1818 London map 

and a drawing room is in the Lloyd’s Building. Other pieces (of the interior) are scattered hither and yon, including another drawing room, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a dining room in NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

You can learn a great deal more about the house, its contents, and where they’ve gone, here at the DiCamillo Companion site.

*Visiting the club’s site will reward you with a history and some lovely old and new, mainly interior, photos of the building, including some fine Art Deco work from the 1930s.

Lansdowne House description

Note: “It was from its inception the only private members club in London where ladies had equal standing with men as they still do.”





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Lalique Necklace for the 1890s

Loretta reports:

René Lalique might be familiar to most of us for his beautiful glass work. However, as we’ve shown before, this artist designed jewelry to the same high standard.

I’ve visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts several times, and wandered in a sort of ecstatic trance through the Art Nouveau and Art Deco collection. But the museum offers so much that I can always count on finding a  remarkable something I somehow overlooked or hadn't time to study previously.
This ca. 1897 Lalique necklace, one of numerous stunning gifts from Sydney and Frances Lewis,

is late 19th century (earlier than the collar linked to above). I think it’s a wonderful example of the work created during the Belle Époque.

Here again is the Art Nouveau emphasis on natural forms, with a rather sparing use of gemstones—emphasis on art and design, in other words, rather than sparkle. It may also  owe something to ancient styles of jewelry I’ve seen in museums—it reminded me of necklaces found in ancient Egyptian tombs.

Pomegranate

You can see a sharper image, and zoom in, here, on the museum website.

For more on Lalique, you might want to check out this past exhibition at the Corning Museum.

Necklace & description card photographed by me.
Botanical print of pomegranate from Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, 1885, Gera, Germany via Wikipedia.

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Those Tiny 1890s Waists & What Adorned Them

Loretta reports:

Following up a little on the Belle Èpoque video—

My most recent trip to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts had me taking a closer look at the Kreuzer collection of belt buckles from the late 19th & early 20th centuries and, in particular, information about the collection. The printed placard offers a good example of the difference between engraved images of fashion and real people wearing them. I think this contrast is pretty stark, and it would be more so if these weren’t models but average women, who would probably be a bit more full-figured. Then, as always, models tended to represent a fashionable ideal rather than reality, though not as extremely as the images on the catalog page.

Previously I’ve posted a garnet belt buckle as well as other objects from the VMFA’s outstanding collection, including sporting prints, Art Nouveau furniture, Art Nouveau & Art Deco jewelry (here and here), and decorative objects. These are only small samples of the offerings. The VMFA is a splendid museum, well worth a visit—or several.

Please click on images to enlarge.

Samuel Pepys Checks His Smartphone...er, Watch, 1665

Isabella reporting,

Recently I shared an 18thc painting of several fashionable folk consulting a pocket-watch with much the same intensity that people (fashionable and otherwise) stare at their iPhones and Androids. Turns out that this fascination with the newest technology is even older, and English diarist, administrator, and politician Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), left, was equally addicted in the 1660s.

Here's a quote from his diary from May, 1665, discussing his watch:

"The the 'Change [the shopping mall of Restoration London] and thence to my watchmaker, where he has put [my watch] in order, and a good and brave piece it is, and he tells me worth £14, which is  greater. . . than I valued it....So home and late at my office. But, Lord! to see how much of my old folly and childishnesse hangs upon me still that I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what o'clock it is one hundred times, and am apt to think with myself, how could I be so long without one; though I remember since, I had one, and found it a trouble, and resolved to carry one no more about me while I lived."

So even though all that Pepys's watch could to was tell the hour, he still couldn't help but check it repeatedly - and ostentatiously - throughout the day in a very smartphone manner.  Unlike the ubiquitous smartphone, however, a watch was still a gentleman's costly status-piece, something that very few ordinary Englishmen would have possessed at the time. Pepys proudly states that his watchman valued his watch at £14. To put this in perspective, the average English laborer in 1670 was earning approximately £13 a year.

It's impossible to know exactly what Pepys' watch looked like, but it was probably similar to the watch shown here, right. Made in London about 1640 by master watchmaker Edward East, it features outer and inner cases of silver and a movement of silver, steel, and gilded brass, with an elegant openwork floral design, lower left.

Note that the watch has only a single hand, for marking the hour. The second, minute hand didn't come into use until later in the 17thc, when the accuracy of watches had increased sufficiently to merit it. This watch could have run as long as sixteen hours from a single winding, although in the course of that time, it could also be as much as several hours wrong. But for its day, it was a marvel. Just ask Samuel Pepys.

Top left: "Samuel Pepys" by J. Hayls, 1666, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Lower right: Watch, made by Edward East, c1640, London. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fashionable Bookcase for March 1814

Secretaire Bookcase 1814

Loretta reports:

Morgan & Sanders, of Nos. 16 & 17 Catherine Street, Strand, London, made and sold patent furniture that was often featured in Ackermann’s Repository. The globe desk I showed last month is an example.

Readers weighed in about the practicality as well as aesthetics of the item, which made me acutely conscious of the distance between the image and the actuality. This gap is clear when I show fashion plates. Rather like fashion sketches today, they’re stylized images, which often make clothing seem stiff and bizarre.

I think the furniture suffers worse in the illustrations. In both cases, I assume this happens partly because these kinds of engravings did not allow the artist the flexibility that paint did, but also because artists lacked the necessary skills and/or time. While Ackermann’s was an expensive magazine, the illustrations are not all of the same quality, and furniture seems to suffer worst.

In any case, I invite you to compare the magazine illustration with a version of one of these globe desks—this time not literally a globe, but global in form—as presented on the site 1stdibs. While this object may not appear any more comfortable a place to write, it doesn’t look as much like a strange object from outer space, and I think we can understand a little better why the Princess Augusta would buy it.

Bookcase description

In the same spirit, I offer for your contemplation Morgan & Sanders’s “Secretaire Bookcase.” While I couldn’t find a version of the piece online, I did find some similar objects for compare and contrast exercise, here & here.

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A Miniature 18thc Fashion Merchant - in Porcelain

Isabella reporting,

Clues to life in the past can turn up in unexpected places. Discovering the interiors of long-ago shops for our characters to visit has always been a particular challenge for Loretta and me. While there are prints and a few paintings that show shop interiors, descriptions can be maddeningly vague. Just as today, shops were so ordinary and commonplace that few people sat down and described them in detail in letters or diaries. When was the last time you documented your local Target for posterity?

All of which is why I found this little (only about six inches high) porcelain so delightful. According to the sign on the front, it shows a marchand de mode, or fashion merchant, complete with a well-dressed shopkeeper ready to serve his customers. I'm not quite sure if the woman represents a customer, or a shop assistant; while the man is firmly behind the counter, her body ends vaguely right on top of it.

The diversity of the goods on the shelves makes me think this is something of a milliner's shop - that is, by the 18thc definition, it contains a variety of small, fashionable goods instead of just hats. There are hats, hanging on the wall, but there are also handkerchiefs and bolts and bolts of fabric, in prints and stripes, checks and solids. I think I can also make out cloaks, or perhaps they're some sort of fancy-dress dominos in the upper left.

Then there are items that I'll have to guess as to their purpose. The cone-shaped items with the red

decoration may be the shields that people held up to protect their faces while their hair was powdered, but then again, they could be folding fans. On the right wall appears to be a display of black silk bows with false curls or queues. I'm also not certain about the black crosses on ribbons, either; are they necklaces, or rosaries, or something else altogether? I know our readers are a well-informed bunch, so if you know better than I, please let me know!

This little shop was made in the Ludwigsburg Porcelain Manufactory, c1765. Apparently the shop was part of a much more elaborate market scene, composed of numerous porcelain shops and figures, and commissioned by Charles Eugene, Duke of Wüttemberg (1728-1793). Apparently the set was inspired by the Duke's visit to Venice, and was used as a table centerpiece for banquets.

Hmm, a formal banquet with an entire Venice street-scene in porcelain strung along the table beneath the candelabra - that sounds like it belongs in a story, too, doesn't it?

Above: Venetian fair shop with two figures, Ludwigsburg Porcelain Manufactory, 1765, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Bedroom furnishings, early 1800s

Grecian style bed 1828

 Loretta reports:

Continuing my visual guide to Dukes Prefer Blondes*, I’m taking you into my heroine’s bedroom to look at a couple of its furnishings.

“The bed was a modern one in the Grecian style, with bare-breasted females supporting the bedposts. Apt enough. Lady Clara ought to have a pair of caryatids at the foot of the bed, guarding the goddess’s temple. Other Grecian-style articles looked on from the mantelpiece. An elaborate urn clock dominated the center. Cupid stood on its pedestal, pointing to the time on the revolving band encircling the urn.”—Dukes Prefer Blondes

This bed in Ackermann’s Repository for October 1828 was my inspiration.

Grecian style bed description

As to the clock: I was looking through Eric Bruton’s fascinating History of Clocks & Watches** when I came upon this lovely timekeeper from the late 1700s. According to the book, it’s in the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague—unfortunately, closed, from what I could ascertain during my online search for a sharper image.

I found other annular clocks online, most from a later period.
This from c.1900.

This French 1850s one.

This one from the 1880s.

And this.

*Previous posts here and here and here and here.

**My 1989 edition of this wonderful book has provided inspiration for other watches and clocks in my stories, most notably the naughty pocket watch in Lord of Scoundrels.

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Friday Video: An 18thc Automaton Watch

Isabella reporting,

This is a very short video - less than a minute - but it's still an impressive tribute to the level of craftsmanship of 18thc. jewelers and watchmakers. Made of gold with enamel, the watch's artistic detail is as stunning as the clockwork mechanism that animates it. Alas, both the maker and the original owner's name are now forgotten, and today the watch is most famous for having been in the collection of  King Farouk of Egypt during the 20thc.

But it's easy to imagine some wealthy (for a watch like this would have been a very costly bauble) nobleman easing this from the fob pocket of his silk breeches and ostentatiously checking the time, making sure that all around him saw the tiny country miss swinging back and forth from the dial. Click on the photo right to see all the details. Beautiful!

Automaton watch, quarter repeater, gold and enamel, late 18thc. Shaw Watch Collection, Guernsey Museums & Galleries.

Miss Tyler's Rug 1825

Loretta reports:

One of many items that caught my eye during my last visit to the Historic Paine Estate, the Oaks, was this rug hanging on the wall of the small dining room (where we previously encountered the table at which John Adams dined). I had assumed this was the work of a skilled adult—until I got a look at the little information card below it, which reads:

This rug was ‘wrought,’ with a needle, in public school, by Elizabeth Tyler of Haddam Connecticut in 1825, she being then nine years of age. Presented to Col. Timothy Bigelow Chapter D.A.R. in May 1919 by Elizabeth Reed Brownell.

We often see samplers made by schoolchildren (the Oaks has several on display). This is a rather different enterprise. I’ve had to play with the color a bit, because of problems with reflection from the glass, but believe me, it’s quite vivid in person. Even if it were badly faded it would still be a wonderful example of the artistic heights a girl could reach with her needle. Walter’s close-up pays homage to both the detail and the sweet design.

Some of our readers, I know, are experienced needlewomen. And some will recall learning to sew in the classroom. Does anybody recall tackling a project like this in elementary school?

Don’t know about you, but I’m impressed by Miss Tyler.

You can see more wonders like this at the Historic Paine Estate, the Oaks, (previous blogs here, here, here, and here), 140 Lincoln Street, Worcester, MA. Remaining visiting days for 2015: 3 October 1-4PM and the Christmas Open House 5 & 6 December.* Please click here for an idea of how pretty the DAR chapter house looks at holiday time.


*For special group tours, please contact the DAR Colonel Timothy Bigelow Chapter: col.timothybigelowchapter@gmail.com.

Please click on images to enlarge.

Beautiful Leaded Glass Lamps by Louis Comfort Tiffany, c. 1905-1910

Isabella reporting,

This afternoon I visited a vibrantly beautiful new exhibition at Winterthur Museum. Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light is exactly that - a glowing selection of some of the most iconic leaded glass works designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Organized by The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, the exhibition includes several large windows as well as the justly famous lamps, some anchored by bronze bases or suspended like brilliant lanterns in the air. Forget all those cheesy bad replicas in casual dining restaurants - the originals are breathtaking works of art, like jewels of light.

While I'd known that the Tiffany shades were leaded glass - small pieces of colored glass fitted together and held together with strips of copper and lead - I hadn't realized that the process was much like making a mosaic. There was no additional painting or tinting of the pieces of glass. Each piece of specially made opalescent glass was chosen individually to fit the design by skilled craftspeople. It must have been painstaking work, but the care and artistry showed in every item.

One of the things that really brought the lamps to life were the "jewels," molded pieces of colored glass in various shapes that were used as accents along with the pieces of flat glass. The jewels were a Tiffany speciality, and added texture as well as color. The jewels are particularly evident in the dragonfly shade, above left - they're the rounded bubbles of luminous blue glass. Magic!

I'm going to share more about the fascinating process of creating the shades in a future blog. The exhibition runs now through January 3, 2016; click here for more information.

Top left: Dragonfly hanging shade, c.1905. Tiffany Studios.
Right: Peony library lamp, c.1905. Tiffany Studios.
Bottom left: Poinsettia Border reading lamp, c. 1910. Tiffany Studios.
All lamps from The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass.
Photographs ©2015 Susan Holloway Scott.