Monday 15 May 2017

E.W Godwin. The Forgotten Giant of Design.

Edward William Godwin (1833-1886) Architect, designer, interior decorator, theatrical producer, antiquary, writer, reformer and critic. That’s a bit of a list
Today he has been relatively forgotten. 
But he remains an important figure in nineteenth century modernism.
“One of the most artistic spirits of this century” said Oscar Wilde describing Edward William Godwin. 
Wilde employed Godwin to design the interior of his house.

Godwin exhibited furniture in some of the great international exhibitions of the nineteenth century including Vienna in 1873, Philadelphia 1876 and Paris 1878 after which he received commissions as far a field as Connecticut and Vienna.


He worked for some of the leading furniture manufacturers. Collin son and Lock, William Watt and Gillows amongst others.
Some of his completed work are now thought of as, beacons of design.
The Anglo-Japanese sideboard of 1867 was far ahead of its day.

The spindle legged coffee table that he designed for William Watt was one of the most copied designs in the 1870's and 1880's.

I first came across Godwin's work in The Sudley Art Gallery. (Before the current director ruined it). His table almost looked strange..... Too many legs but that was the uniqueness of the piece. This table made by William Watt and illustrated in Watt's Art Furniture could be bought in Walnut for £7.7s. 0d or in ebonized wood for the higher price of £7.15s.0d. Brass shoes for added stability for an extra £1.10s.0d.



Art Furniture and Designs by E.W Godwin, F.S.A and Others, with Hints and Suggestions on Domestic Furniture and Decorations was published in 1887 and reprinted 1878. Allowing the public to ponder over his designs and influence on modern taste.





He designed wallpapers and floor coverings and fabrics often coming up with new ideas how to hang curtains and decorate walls.
He designed ceramics for W. Brownfield and Sons, Cobridge and tiles for Minton and Hollins.

He played a leading role in aesthetic taste in Britain pioneering the use of plain distempered walls with plain wood floors covered simply by Indian matting or perhaps an Oriental carpet.
He wrote some 450 articles for architectural and building journals along with other publications that saw his influence reign over a country ready for changing styles.

He did not rely on one style but combined historic styles such as Jacobean and Greek with the new taste for the East.
He encouraged others to do the same. 
He was eclectic in his choice of influence.
A.W.N Pugin in the 1840's had exclusively designed in Gothic.
Godwin used amongst others classical motifs. 
Attempting to fuse historicism with modernity at a time Britain saw itself as the Empire nation that imported a vocabulary on design that it felt, with a brash arrogance, could do better. 
The bringing together of the world into a British style.



Britain’s internationalism was also part of its superiority complex and the middle classes were rich enough to be able to aspire to the new found evocation of their need to be ahead of the rest and furnish their homes with all sorts of new exotic designs with inspiration from the world.
After the first Japanese delegation arrived in Britain in 1862 and Japanese goods were shown at the international exhibition Japanese creativity became the influence of a new dawn on British design.
Designers such as Godwin were thought of as innovators rather than cross-references of eastern art.
His modular furniture designs was far ahead of the mid 20th century happening. The coming together of the need for built in furniture and hygiene combined with simplicity.
Most people would not put the era of the 1860's and minimalism together.

He was the architect of Herbert McNeil's Whistlers house in Tite Street that he named The Whitehouse.
A paired down style at a time when ornamentation was king.
Though other styles came into play, Japan was his main inspiration which is hardly surprising whith the influx of artefacts from Japan that came to the attention of the west when the Japanese opened up their trade links, after a little bit of gunboat diplomacy.
The fashion for ebonised furniture and dark weighty heavy pieces saw him move into a simple style of designing that now seems way ahead of its time.
Minimalism with maximum effect.
This was a time of aesthetic movement, a new romantic of the 1870's where people could, as Oscar Wilde would, wander round town in velveteen, reciting poetry, smelling gardenias.
Where new movements such as the Pre-Raphealites would declare.... the end of art is the new beginning......




A modest provincial upbringing in Bristol. His father was a leather dresser who died young, but before he died he had Edward apprenticed to a sober architect by the name of William Armstrong.
William knew his calling was London and eventually his aspirations took him there.
His attentive mind saw him involved, or interested in all aspects of design.
He was a Theatre critic for a while. 
One thespian that did not like his review turned up at his house. Where Godwin was dressed as Henry V in fine hose and was subsequently chased with a horsewhip by the disgruntled actor.
He was influenced by the Italian Gothic revival led and held in such high regard by John Ruskin, who championed it.

Being an architect Godwin said, “You were the mother of all arts.” For that reason he wanted to design everything right down to the knives and forks that came out only for dinner.
Beauty above truth........... The aesthetic movements clarion call was a vocation meant to run through all aspects of ones life.
He belonged to a club without membership. This entertainment for the masses was portrayed in print in the publications of their day, for all to see.

He kept a journal and would write about pretty chambermaids at every inn he stayed while out studying medieval architecture in Cornwall.
He married 1850 to his first wife who was the daughter of an independent minister.
They enjoyed many interesting visits to historic buildings together.
He was living in Bristol when he went to the International Exhibition of 1862, the follow on of the great Exhibition. There he discovered the art of Japan and went on to decorate his house in the new taste with Japanese prints on the wall.

Ellen Terry was 14 when she visited Godwin then still living with his first wife.
He designed a dress for her. Later on she described how impressed she was with the house he had designed, and with him.
She at 16 married G.F.Watts but she became somewhat unhappy with a man 30 years older than her and she always had a fondness for Godwin, and he stole her, she eloped with him.
She was famous, a serious actress in the 1860's. The scandal ensued. They had two children out of wedlock.
 He was a philanderer and while living in Hertfordshire he would visit ladies in London. 
He was obstinate in his ideals and did not want to listen to his clients more often than not he would do things his way. The pair had a bit of a tough time financially but went to London to straighten out finances where his head was turned again. They split and it was not long before he met Beatrice an architectural student who he taught.

He and Whistler were forever involved this was a period of excitement and change. The 20th century was just around the corner.
His students were thankful for the time he spent with them helping them. 
But he was also known as a selfish person greedy to do lots of things.
A biography in the Spectator Review “The conscious stone” by Dudley Harberin around 1914 said. 

“Few people will be familiar with the name of Edward Godwin this proud and disappointed man was the victim of providence's most malevolent tease for he was endowed with a immeasurable fertility of mind and a contrasting lack of creative ability. But the plain truth is his artistic output was exiguous and unimportant and Godwin was a man of eccentric and violent prejudices that he never hesitated to express in the most uncompromising and dogmatic terms. He was moreover almost always in the right. Such people are of course disagreeable to live and work with, and his relations with his wives, colleagues and clients show him to be a little bit of a cad, and dare we say it crook.”

He was not a man of that time. 
He was a man of Gothic time of Victorian sturdy ornamentation. But the second half of the 20th century saw us looking back to the inspiration for modernism as well as modernism itself. We now know more about the man then we did then.
One of his complimentries said he was “ an architect who had no compeer in England and a designer on consummate skill”.
The later obituaries say that he was a man unfulfilled who didn’t achieve his full potential.
The Whistler Whitehouse and the Wilde Interior were great works indeed. 
They captured the spirit of an age. The vivid colours of the interiors and the white furniture, which now seems lost in the scourge time, were ahead of its day.
Did he inspire the Mackintosh Glasgow interiors?
He won many architectural competitions showing artistic vision.
He had a yearning for the middle ages and was obsessed with accuracy in costume design.
Truth before beauty was the benchmark for his historical costumes for the theatre. This was a reversal of the motto of the aesthetes. He also produced plays.
Along with Lady Archibald Campbell the great Grey Lady. The great aesthetic muse of the day. They decided to put on Shakespeare in Coombe Forest........... As You Like It.
The play was performed as if they were really living in the woods with forest men carrying deer over their shoulders. Godwin dressed as a monk in one play.
He had an ambition and wanted to be a Theatre producer and built a studio flat in Tite Street where he could entertain his ambition.

Godwin was often called The Wicked Earl.

He married Beatrice 1876 but he never built much after.
He was buried in 1886 in an unmarked grave in his early fifties after a kidney operation that went wrong.
His wooden casket was carried on a farm cart and it was said that Beatrice, Whistler and Lady Campbell ate a sandwich on top of the coffin.
An account said the widow was in a white fur lined coat and wild gypsy hair. The second in a yellow Ulster with turquoise tam-o-shanter and a third in a French grey sailor blouse and hat. Rustics shouldered the coffin.
Lady Archibald Campbell said that at this precise moment she saw the first flirtation between Whistler and Beatrice. They soon became husband and wife.
Godwin and Beatrice's son Teddy designed the angels around Whistlers grave.

For a long time he was forgotten.

Roger Fry wrote about Godwin’s style as “a horror genuine modern style as yet which has no name, a period of black polished furniture with spidery lines”.
Nicholas Pevsner’s first edition of Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius had no mention of Godwin at all.
Though Maurice Adams described him as a genius, but considered his career a failure.
C.F.A Voysey admitted his work owed much to earlier architect-designers such as William Burgess, E.W Godwin A. H MacMurdo, Bodley and others.
1945 saw Dudley Harbron write a scholarly essay on Godwin for Architectural Review. 
He highlighted this five-page article with line drawings.
 Three years later Pevsner praised Godwin's wallpaper designs.
Harbron in 1949 published a small biography with many inaccuracies but the work saw a turning point in the understanding of the forgotten man. 
Letters between Oscar Wilde and Godwin were found and in 1952 the Victoria and Albert Museum highlighted Godwin’s influences in the first museum-based exhibition of his work.
The 1950's and 60's saw a steady appreciation of his place in the 19th century. 
In 1960 the third edition of Pevsners Modern Pioneers of Design sealed his placement on the steps of design.
The 1970's saw numerous exhibitions including one at the Royal academy named Victorian Decorative Art that showed the collection of Charles Handley-Read that included four pieces of Godwin Furniture.
1976 saw Bristol Museums staged a show of Marcel Breuer and Godwin furniture two designers with links to Bristol this accompanied a bequest of fourteen pieces of furniture from Godwin's daughter Edith Craig.
In 1978 William Watts Art Furnishers catalogue was reprinted.
The 1980's saw more Godwin pieces appearing on the market and being snapped up by institutions.
The over decorated Victorian period has been thought of as a period of design as ebonised as much of the furniture that was created, back then.



 Much of Godwin’s output was retailed though Liberty & Co to an avant-garde clientele that included Godwin’s close friends.
Godwin himself complained in the foreword to the 1877 William Watt trade catalogue Art Furniture that an ebonised side table, designed in 1867 and made by Watt in the late 1860s and 70s, had been regularly copied without authorisation.
These look-alikes find a ready market today, at around £100-150, the fraction of the price of a William Watt made Godwin original.
There is also a distinction to made between the designs Godwin produced - both earlier in his career and for more conservative clients - which are grounded in traditional Victorian design and the more desirable stark geometric forms for which he is most admired.

 There were many plagiarised copies of his tables.



But along with Christopher Dresser there seems to my mind a thorough examination must be taken of the enduring modernism of this Great Victorian.  

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Ernst Riegel Silver Box-Piece Of The Week.

 I love this beautiful silver box and cover.
 It is not hallmarked being continental, the same rigid hallmarking system was never adopted on the British scale. 
German silver is often marked 850 against our 925 standard.
When a friend brought it in I was impressed by the sculptural qualities of the minute female figure standing aloft on a silver plinth flanked by four cabochons with semi precious stones encased within. 
It is only small 14 cm high and the figure is a dainty 7cm.
The next thing I noticed is how the lid just fits so perfectly as if there isn't a join at all, the maker has put the join on the edge of the box so that it is almost a secret opening. Its been thought about alright. Years of skill encompassed in such a jewel like object.
It is hardly surprising to find out that the maker was a master gold and silver smith steeped in a sculptural tradition that allowed him to cast silver to perfection, loosely and playfully echoing the prevailing style. 
Art Nouveau. 
He did have to switch with the times when a more modernist approach was required. 



There are no fingers or facial expressions, for me, it has the qualities of a ten minute sketch by a master artist.
This is a small work by Ernst Riegel.



Ernst Riegel was born 12 September 1871 in Münnerstadt, Franks, and died 14 February 1939 in Cologne. He was a German goldsmith, sculptor and university professor.
From an early age he was impressed by the works of Tilman Riemenschneider and especially of the famous winged altar in the church he saw.
In 1890 he studied sculpture and the goldsmith's art for five years at The Royal School of Applied Arts in Munich , with amongst others, Fritz Miller.
He joined the Darmstadt artists' colony in 1908 and came third in the Hesse exhibition.
Riegel was a member of the Deutsche Werkbund.
He was commissioned to make the chain of the office of the Lord Mayor of Darmstadt and was commissioned in 1912 with the design of the Lutheran Church in Worms.
He brought Emil Thormählen to Cologne in 1913 who, he entrusted with the management of gold and silversmithing class.
In 1926 he was appointed professor at Cologne led by Richard Riemerschmid.
During The World War when the motto was "I gave gold for iron" it was difficult to work with precious metals. After the war there was subsequent period of massive inflation, it was almost impossible to work with precious metals during this period.
To allow the students a realistic and practical time-and labour on materials, he initiated the establishment of a business office at the factory schools run by a commercial director.
The aim, through his contacts made with industry, government agencies and private citizens was to obtain work orders and the studios and workshops on performance of the Cologne factory schools to make development and testing laboratories.
His plan worked: the precious metals department and the Department of Religious Art financed almost half the budget of the university.
The city of Cologne could be called a factory school.
The Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer awarded well-paid jobs that were, in 1929, laying the foundation stone of the new building of the University of Cologne.
Lindenthal, the headmaster had chains in gold and cups in silver manufactured by Ernst with his students.
Wealthy citizens of Cologne patronised the school - the Association of Friends of the Cologne factory schools - placed orders thus allowing for a qualified student education.
With the rise of the Nazis the work of the Cologne factory schools was defamed, and in 1933 a dozen artists and teachers were dismissed.
Among them was Ernst Riegel, "fired with immediate effect. His successor, was Charles Berthold.

See More by clicking the link below







Friday 3 February 2017

Did Picasso Invent The Blues?

Carlos Casagemas, Picasso's friend who was impotent, killed himself on February 17th 1901.
The approximate year of the birth, in a shack, in New Orleans of Louis Armstrong.
Devastated by his death, Picasso painted several portraits of him while he lay dead on his bed, the life draining out of him.
 Pain found the brushstrokes.
He had turned blue, the cold setting in, showing the fragility of existence.
Picasso entered this blue period, literally making precedence to the term, the blues.
He had left Barcelona and Gaudi behind, to go to Paris.


Decades later after this blue painting period of Picasso, Josephine Baker and Sydney Bechet brought the afro-american music called Jazz with them. Was it called the blues then?
Where did the term, the blues first enter the modern vocabulary, and why?
Did Picasso discover that blue for cold. Was blue for death.
The ancient Greeks in mythology related blue to rain and the tears of the God Zeus, who would make rain when he was sad and he cried.
James Audubon the the 19th century author in 1827 wrote in his journal, that he “had the blues.”
Did Picasso know this and relate the colour to the cold flesh he saw, or was he relating it to a term to describe how he felt. Speculation has gone before me.
He was in a state of self deprivation, he had the blues.
Two years later he would cap it off and start again, with a painting called life.
His mourning was over. He no longer had the blues. His blue period was finished.
At 22 he moved into the 'laundry boat' named by his poet friend Max Jacob Le Bateau Lavior.
This was the time of Madeleine and the Medrano circus.
He met acrobats and he painted himself as Harlequin and by doing so, announcing he had finished mourning.
Fernande Olivier was his next love who walked in during a thunderstorm.
He then began to paint, in competition with Matisse, as if he was primitive or copying primitive form. African masks and shapes from that great continent.
Learning his way as he went.
Did his search for feeling find him when he got the blues over the death of his best friend?
Edmund Portier had brought back photos of Africa to Paris.
Photography was tried and this led him into a different perspective.
He said “What was the point in painting now”. So he worked harder.
His photographs were cut and distorted in geometrical forms. The deconstruction.
Breaking up heads with sculpture he would feel his different experiences. Was it that simple?
Musical scales had been broken up and re-invented in New Orleans (named after the French city of Orlean) by the mixed race Creole. The Blues were born out of a re-invention of musical scales and the invention of The Blues Scale with its flattened third and its semi-tones.
So art would be remade and remodelled in Paris.

Then there was Eva.
Ma Jolie and the cubist musical instruments.
Braque enters the frame.
Picasso kept the portrait of Eva he did until his death. She died of Tuberculosis.
Jean Cocteau he met. In the village that was Montmartre.
Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe and Eric Satie and Olga, he followed on a tour.
He designed the curtain to, that, opera that did not go down too well.
Apollinaire said the new spirit was surrealism, a new spirit.

They would be inseparable. Olga Khokhlova.
Spanish flu took Apollonaire. Rozenburg financed his new glamorous life.
Ivor Stravinsky. High Society.
Bodies get bigger and giants appear in his work at this point, he is a father.
His work is his biography.
The roaring twenties. Dance Macabre is a change. Love is fatale his fears show anguish.
Paul Colin paints Jesephine Baker dancing in Le Revue Negre.
Marie-Therese Walter was 17. He disguises her even though she is seventeen.
He is 47 and takes photos and makes a flip book of images of her.
Obsessive repetition and the Minotaur.
The monster leaves Olga his wife, for Marie Therese.
Olga remained Madame Picasso because as a Spaniard he could not divorce.
A golden cage for Olga to live, and he wrote poetry to her.
Dora Maar spoke Spanish. Surrealism and Man Ray.
Hitler and Mussolini. Come into his life and play a part.
Andre Breton published his poems. Popular Front victory is Spain and Franco's civil war.
Spanish Pavilion asked for a painting. 27th April 1937.
Guernica.
It went on tour to Manchester as a fundraiser.
Françoise Gilot.
1947 and a new child. He lived in La Galliose.
Madoura ceramic workshops. He had moved south and worked there.
The dove of Peace. Dove, or Paloma in Spanish, was born.
Bullfights at Arles and Nimes.
1951 another girlfriend sees a break up with Franciose.
Jacqueline Roque 1954.
Olga died and Jacqueline became Madame Picasso.                           Marie Therese
Creation day, after day, after day. Canvases piled up.
He died in his bed drawing.
Marie Therese ended her life. Wouldn't you if you had this portrait painted of you?
Jacqueline in 1986 spilled a revolver in her head on the date of his inaugural exhibition. (in Madrid).
She definatly had the blues. Picasso seemed to give his lovers depression. Was he blue.
Quite a lot of Picasso's work depresses me.
His pottery at Madoura is all but a joke in my opinion.
If it was not by he, some of it would be laughable.

So where did the term the blues come from?
There are references that could be linked to feeling blue. A coldness of spirit.
Picasso maybe picked up on these blue thoughts.
Maybe it goes back a bit further than the great man to an age gone by.
There was a tradition amongst deep water sailing ships in America.
That when they had lost their Captain or officers, during the voyage to return to port, they would fly blue flags and also they would paint a blue band along the entire hull as it came into port.
Thus signifying that all was not right.
The blue paint was a warning to those ashore to expect the worst, prepare for some bad news.
Coleridge wrote and felt it in, The Ancient Mariner picking up the spirit of the sea, as he infused his blood with opium.
Death of a sailor could mean poverty for his wife and family.
But for Picasso it gave him inspiration to paint.
Feeling blue made you famous.
Just how blue can you be.








Tuesday 10 January 2017

Antiques Roadshow 2017 Valuation Dates.

Here is where Antiques Roadshows is going in 2017


There are some great venues for 2017.

 2016 was a very good year with an average of six million people watching the show.

I had a great time as part of the Roadshow team in 2016.  

2017 looks like being a very exciting year but we rely on the wonderful people who take the time to bring their treasured possessions along.

 Not forgetting the things that may not appear to have any value, that they may have found in a skip or that may have been in the loft for decades.  See you soon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4BFprksgSjpvxsdCTwDFQlJ/antiques-roadshows-2017

Thursday 22 September 2016

Utility Furniture.

During the Second World War it had become apparent, as early as 1941, that the German U-Boats patrolling the Atlantic were sinking so much of Britain's essential materials that it was difficult to supply the country.
 Even before the war, Britain was never self sufficient in its need for raw materials, such as timber and had a severe lack of indigenous timber suitable for furniture making.
Yet there was still increased demand for new furniture due to the losses caused by bombing and to the continuing establishment of new households after marriage. 
And of course increased war production.


The Utility Furniture Advisory Committee was set up in 1942, drawing on considerable expertise.


Gordon Russell, Ernest Clench, Herman Lebus and John Gloag were brought in because of their experience, to assure that these scarce available resources were used in a sensible way.

Rationing of new furniture was restricted to newly-weds and people who had been bombed out, under the "Domestic Furniture (Control of Manufacture and Supply (No 2)) Order 1942" which became operative from 1 November 1942.

The aim was to ensure the production of strong well-designed furniture making the most efficient use of the recsource of timber available.


The Committee were reconstituted as the Utility Design 

Panel in 1943 with Gordon Russell as Chairman.











The furniture, made during the war, featured a 'CC' 

symbol.


The symbol was designed by Reginald Shipp. 

The motif is known as two cheeses. 



Along with the two cheeses there should also be 

number 

indicating the year so CC41 stands for 'Controlled 


Commodity 1941'.

It appeared on all sorts of items, furniture, linen, 

clothes and many other domestic items.


The Committee produced a number of approved 

designs, many were published in the Utility Furniture 

Catalogue of 1943.  





Post War



After the second world war the Board of Trade 

took control of furniture production.

They regulated the industry and set out to control manufacture, by law, controlling the use and movement of all materials
Strict specifications were laid down and the Utility Furniture scheme was used to assist production. Or so it was claimed.
Licenses were issued and quite a lot of these were given to companies already in the manufacture of aircraft, and other war supplies.
These companies, it was thought, were able to make furniture in a form of construction that could make light furniture with the use of plywood.
The control of design through meticulous attention to production encompassing good design was laid down through a technical framework.

1945 saw the Directorate of Furniture production transformed.

This became the headquarters of the British Furniture Industry.
Five different sections were divided into the design section.
  1. The Technical section.
  2. A planning section.
  3. A licensing section.
  4. A material issue section.
  5. The design section.


The Utility stamp was brought in as the abolition of priority cases gave way to the needs of the entire community.
This administration of material was used to control the entire manufacturing process until 1948 when this was revoked and a licence was granted to enable the Utility marks to be used generally.
This in theory stopped the government control. 
But in practice raw materials were still given in precedence to those producing for the Utility scheme.
Gradually they would be able to place the mark on their own designs.
The categorisation of articles had to continue and goods sold under a appropriate maximun price.
In 1946, in conjunction with the important exhibition of post-war design, "Britain Can Make It", three new furniture ranges were unveiled (Cotswold, Chiltern and Cockaigne) intended to carry forward the best of their design ethos into the postwar period.

As the names suggests it was a style that was 


looking back to the past more in line with Arts 


and Crafts.

The general public had less money to spend so it became a buyers market. Slowly the furniture industry would return to a normal community.
The theory was that, if efficient companies were chosen to manufacture from the start there may have been less waste. 
But it was thought that this would have been market manipulation and stifle the fledgling industry.

It is hard to envisage today that it was a offence punishable by imprisonment for any company to make a single stick of furniture. This constriction continued for three or four years after the war.
Many with licenses were not the best of manufacturers.
And the old boy network surely came into play.
Buying of timber was forbidden, by law. There was a rationing of timber, and it was also an offence to consume pre-war stock. That's was if it was not requesitioned.
The government control in effect created a black market.
During the war there were only 137 licensed furniture manufacturers in 1943.
This rose to 450 in 1945 out of a total of 4000 companies. 
The remainder were treated as if they did not exist.
A license was required for the manufacture of a coffee table, and this may be given, provided the timber content did not exceed a fraction of a cubic foot. And all calculations were laid down.
Off cuts and stubs had to come from elsewhere as companies could not use their own. 
To make things worse the license could be refused to obtain these off cuts
Purchase tax rose from 33% to over 66% rendering the tables and other pieces virtually unsaleable.
Even if you were lucky enough to pull all the right strings and get it made you would have to be extremely lucky to sell the damn things.
As an example David Joel released from the Navy wanted to get going. His factory had been let for the production of aeroplanes and then sold to a cosmetics company but he had some land at the back of his old workshops that he acquired.
He then had a factory without labour. Then he acquired machinery and was given a list by the Board of Trade of what was needed. These amounted to Fancy goods and Domestic equipment in reality, Ironing boards, rolling pins, blinds, cards and trays.
When a lady from the government turned up he struck up a relationship with her.
She had been a milliner near his Knightsbridge showroom. “neighbourly feelings prevailed and I got my Timber” he was quoted as saying.
It's not what you know of course.
Stafford Cripps had set up a working party in 1945 for the furniture trade. They had constructed bodies for the nationalization but when the government imposed a purchase tax it killed it stone dead.

War kept its grip for a long time after cestation and it was said a malaise crept in.

To make things worse the national stock pile of timber was piled in the open air but still existed in huge quantities in 1951 but the deteriation due to the lack of care led to most of it being worthless.
The mositure content was left uncontrolled while bureaucracy took place and those in the scheme did alright but numerous craftsmen had to change trade through no fault of their own.
This would add another factor to the industry getting back on its feet.
Up until as late as 1948 the supply of Utility furniture was restricted to priority cases.
The intended 'setting free of design' came about but it still took three months of bureaucracy to be able to apply for a license to be able to apply the utility mark.

There was a market for reproduction style furniture and the Utility scheme seemed hardly worth its bulk through design.

The task of creating ingenious design hardly seemed worth it for many companies struggling enough and wanting to, just get on with honest work of giving the public what they wanted. 
There was a black market with carvings added making the design more appropriate and easier for the public to accept.

The cost of shipping and crating was prohibitive to its manufacture.
Still the Development council was engaged in performance tests. 
Chairs had to pass breaking tests along with others. It was all very well to design wear tests but if the timber used was not the right moisture content then it seems pointless.
A chair could withstand any test at manufacture but if it is not properly seasoned it may well fall to pieces in a couple of weeks. The quality it seems had been taken away from the people who understood the task in hand, the craftsmen.

Scandinavian design was held in regard and was possibly a major influence on the post war design. Though it now seems apparent that design was indeed led by cost and the Scandinavian style was not as thick and heavy as the Arts and Crafts inheritance that was prevalent before war broke out.

The scheme was officially closed in 1952, the same year that furniture rationing ceased.


Heals produced Utility furniture as did Gordon Russell.

Thursday 25 August 2016

Jean Bulio Bronze-Piece of the Week.


 Jean Bulio was born in Fabregues in 1827 in the Herault region, South of France.
 It was Montpellier where he died in 1911.
He left behind a good body of work including a bust of Napoleon.
His work had titles such as Venus and Cupid.

 His style was mainly classical which is hardly surprising when he had enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1859. He exhibited a plaster cast that year of Pandora.
 In 1882 and also 1886 he received honorable mentions.

This bronze is unsigned and is only small, being 17cm high but large enough to make it tactile and want to hold it in the hand as many have done before showing a little rubbing at the touch spots allowing a slightly more golden colour to bleed through.

The patina is nice though. It has that chocolate brown colour that almost makes it good enough to eat.



At first glance it looks slightly to one angle but to those with a detailed eye will see that is because the sculptor has made the piece that way. It is as if the player of the pan pipes is just about to leap on to his other foot.
That time where it is most difficult to see and ambitious to create.
He has puffed out his cheeks ready to blow.

 Jean Bulio has gone out of his way and decided to make his piece showing that he understands movement along with anatomy.
 The The Pan Pipe player is draped in a wrap around his torso just enough to give it the feel of plein air, a feeling that the subject being outside and taking part in some form of celebration or maybe even a procession.
He looks Greek and the pipes are often associated with classical Greece. His hair is blowing in the breeze.
He is not a Hercules or a strong man, just a simple musician.
This is a careful study.
I have the same piece in my own collection on a different coloured base. I have had him for fifteen years and have never been able to part with it. Mine is African red marble.
Here we see Belgium slate being used.




See my sculpture section of my website for this and others of a similar style and period.
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