With the temperature outside at record highs this week, I can’t help but think of William Henry Bradley’s The Blue Lady. Clutching her ice skates in her left hand, she makes a cold winter’s stroll through the thin, bare trees look elegant and placid. The Blue Lady was Bradley’s second poster for The Chap-Book, America’s...
George Barbier’s Au Jardin des Hespérides (Garden of the Hesperides) appeared in 1913 in Gazette du Bon Ton. Translated as the “Journal for Good Taste,” it was intended for an elite readership concerned with high-society culture and entertainment, as well as the latest developments in fashion and beauty. The publication was led by the publishing...
The publisher J.M. Dent was an admirer of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, founded in 1889 and known for expensive, lavish publications featuring illustrations and decorations by artists such as Edward Burne-Jones printed from hand-cut woodblocks. Dent conceived the idea of producing books in the style of the Kelmscott Press but at a much lower cost,...
This brooch, entitled Melusine, was designed by Marie-Claude Lalique and dates to about 1965. Made of thin gold wire, the brooch features the face of a woman whose hair swirls and coils into the wings of a butterfly. The piece is enhanced with a scattering of diamonds and emeralds. The date of 1965 may be...
In this age of electronic assistants, it is hard for many to fathom a time when telephone service was limited and mail, or what today is referred to as “snail mail”, was the order of the day. During the early decades of the twentieth century written letters were the most common form of communication, and...
Stylized tulips and acanthus leaves flow skywards through this sidewall from the early eighteen nineties as though they are caught in a fast running stream. Their dynamic movement captures the eye and draws it along the sinuous curves of lithe stems and broad fronds that weave their way across the paper. Such a design is...
This roll of embossed imitation leather wallpaper is a beautiful example of Art Nouveau design. The pattern is a repeating design of a single motif, a stylized ear of wheat or other grain, lined up in offset horizontal rows. The leaves have been delicately rendered with the tip ending in a scroll, while the top...
On this sidewall, strange enormous flowers drawn in blue are scattered on a green ground. Their tortuous curling stems are highlighted in bright orange and yellow. It is these bright highlights that catch our eyes first, so that our first thought is that what we are seeing is a purely abstract paper of swirling forms....
In the 1920s, architect Hector Guimard, a pioneer of the stylized natural forms and curving lines of late 19th century Art Nouveau, turned his attention to socially conscious design as France struggled to recover from the widespread devastation of the First World War. The impact of the “Great War” on French infrastructure, agriculture and housing...
