Cooper Hewitt’s object conservators’ technical study and conservation of the surtout de table (designed by Pierre-Phillipe Thomire, ca. 1805) in the museum’s permanent collection was recently presented at several conservation-focused conferences (including focuses on sliver-leaf mirror and gilt metal). Information about the treatments and special imaging techniques used to study the piece were also shared...
From the Blog
This post was originally published on December 12, 2015. The French designer Edgar Brandt spurred a revival of interest in interior furnishings made of iron in the 1920s. His participation in the 1925 Paris Exposition won him great praise. Brandt’s ironwork was admired throughout the fair; he designed the gates of the front entrance, his...
Sixteenth-century Europe saw, with the apogee of humanism, the reactivation of intellectual and creative energies towards classical antiquity, through which the decorative arts flourished. Designs were highly imaginative, with increasingly complicated, fantastical motifs, in which material opulence coexisted with humanist knowledge in the form of historical and mythological themes.[1] A case in point is this...
