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The Decorated Wall -Wallpapers, Stencils and Murals of the Arts & Crafts Movement |
| Biggest Basement Sale Ever Saturday, July17 10 am to 5pm Our basement sales are always extremely popular, and this one will be the biggest one yet, I promise. Furniture, lighting, metalware, carpets, pottery, paintings, projects and much, much more. We will also be discounting selected antiques and reproductions in the gallery as well. People start to line up early, but no one will be admitted before lOam. Stencil Workshop Saturday, July 31, lOam to 11am This is a practical, hands-on workshop that explains the mysteries of stenciling. Actually, it’s extremely easy, and everyone who has taken this workshop has gone on to create hundreds of beautiful stencil decorations in their own homes. Workshop fee: $20.00 (includes a high-quality brush to keep) Continued on page 2 |
The image that most people bring to mind when imagining the typical
Victorian interior is probably one of excessive decoration and ornamentation surrounding a
clutter of disparate objects. By contrast, the typical Arts & Crafts interior may
bring to mind a vision of plain, simple, unadorned surfaces enclosing a few elegant,
carefully-chosen and arranged objects. If these two different views represent the ends of
the spectrum, the reality, for both, was somewhat closer to the middle. True, a few
Victorian interiors were over-decorated and encrusted with knickknacks, but many were the
result of carefully followed "plans" for decorating that could be found in
taste-making books and magazines of the period On the other hand, not all Arts & Crafts interiors were the Zen-like meditation spaces that we might like to imagine. More often than not, the typical Arts & Crafts interior was enlivened through the use of colorful stencils, wallpapers, murals and borders. These, combined with the major and minor color schemes of carpets, portieres, pillows and other textiles, could bring a great deal of visual complexity to an interior. The main difference between the Victorian use of multiple colors and patterns and that of the Arts & Crafts period was the latter’s employment of a single, unifying tonal range, and the use of a limited number of grayed, tertiary" colors. This created an integrated color palette and a harmonious mixture of textures and patterns that was totally in keeping with the Arts & Crafts aesthetic of simplicity. An interesting comparison between the Victorian sensibility towards wall surfaces and that of the Arts & Crafts Movement can be seen in the wallpapers of the period. The prevailing popular taste in the 1860’s and ‘70’s in wallpaper was towards a "naturalistic" depiction of birds, flowers or even landscapes, commonly referred to as the "French" style. In contrast, the early Arts & Crafts papers, created mostly in England, strove to create flat, geometricized motifs that emphasized the flatness of the wall itself. Perhaps no single person is more closely identified with Arts & Crafts wallpaper design than William Morris. (figure 1) Although he professed to dislike paper on walls of any sort, he nevertheless designed or produced over seventy distinct patterns, many (continued on page 2) |
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To see more William Morris Papers and Fabrics available for sale click here. |
