ONLINE LEARNING
Painted Walls: New Virtual Museum Offers an Immersive Experience
BY MARGARET GAERTNER AND KATHLEEN CRISCITIELLO
The Center for Painted Wall Preservation (CPWP) is dedicated to the research and preservation of 18th- and 19th-century American paint-decorated plaster walls. As part of its mission to document and encourage appreciation of this vulnerable and increasingly rare art form, CPWP identified 40 of the best surviving examples in New England and upstate New York and commissioned photographer Michael Wasserman to photograph and digitally scan 20 of these interiors.
Seafaring Portraits in Bermuda and the Atlantic Basin
BY DAMIรT SCHNEEWEISZ
Miniatures have long held a great capacity for circum-oceanic movement and engagement. In museum collections, these small portrait-objects have straddled the worlds of decorative and fine art and jewelry. They are difficult to categorize, often painted on sheets of vellum or ivory with watercolors and set with hairwork in oft-bedazzled lockets that could be worn or carried on the body.
Multi-Sensorial Materials: Egyptomania and the Decorative Impulse
BY LEA C. STEPHENSON
Across the late-19th-CENTURY Anglophone world, artists and collectors fabricated Orientalist fantasies of Egypt as part of a phenomenon that became known as Egyptomania. This sensation included an embodied and material engagement with the modern North African Middle East and the ancient Islamic empire.
Summer Reading Recommendation: Ceramic Art
BY JESSIE DEAN
‘Ceramic Art’ is the first volume in Princeton University Pressโs ART/WORK series, which invites readers to reconsider a section of art history through the lens of materials and conservation. The eight essays in this anthology, edited by Caroline Fowler and Ittai Weinryb, demonstrate the enchanting and elusive nature of ceramics across time and cultures.
The Finest Regency Porcelain Painter: Thomas Baxter in Worcester
BY CHARLES DAWSON
There is no greater name in the history of English Regency porcelain painters than that of Thomas Baxter. His whole life was given to the art of porcelain painting, and his work at the Worcester Flight & Barr factory, the subject of a new book, is among the choicest of the era.
Historic Odessa Collections Published
BY PHILIP D. ZIMMERMAN
One hundred of the objects in the Delawareโs Historic Odessa Foundation’s Wilson-Warner House and the Corbit-Sharp House are addressed in detail in the new book ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐๐ข๐ด๐ต: ๐๐ฐ๐ญ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ค๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ด ๐ฐ๐ง ๐๐ช๐ด๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ค ๐๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด๐ข, with four chapters exploring the townโs early settlement, families, craftsmen, and preservation.
Interwoven: Women’s Lives Written in Thread
BY REED GOCHBERG
The Concord Museumโs special exhibition ๐๐ฏ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ: ๐๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏโ๐ด ๐๐ช๐ท๐ฆ๐ด ๐๐ณ๐ช๐ต๐ต๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐๐ฉ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ features samplers made by young women during the 18th and 19th centuries in Middlesex County, MA.
โA Place to Cultivate her Mind in by Musingโ: New Exploration of Anne Emlenโs 1757 Shellwork Grotto
BY KAILA TEMPLE
Anne Reckless Emlenโs 1757 creation, referred to by scholars and Stenton Museum staff over the years as a grotto box or shell box, is an object in which one can easily get lost.
A Million Hidden Stories: Uncovering Materials at the New Orleans Museum of Art
BY LAURA OCHOA RINCON
Thanks to my Decorative Arts Trust Curatorial Fellowship, I have learned an extraordinary amount in my first year about glass, rings, fashion, and how all of these different objects are ways to convey stories about people.
French Interiors for an American Gilded Age
BY LAURA C. JENKINS
From the early 1880s onward, the movement of French 18th-century decorative arts from Europe to New York coincided with a growing fashion among the wealthy of that city for rooms in French historical styles.