Object of the Month
"Object of the Month" is a new web column. Each month an invited
guest "curator" will discuss—from any number of perspectives—an object currently on view in the BGC Gallery.
English Embroidery from the Metropolitian Museum of Art, 1580-1700: ’Twixt Art and Nature
The exhibition, English Embroidery from the Metropolitian Museum of Art, 1580-1700: ’Twixt Art and Nature, explores the technical, stylistic and iconographical characteristics of English embroideries of the late Elizabethan and Stuart eras, and asks questions as to their production and uses within the context of the home and of their relationship to the wider ambient culture.
by Melinda Watt
Despite the present fragile and somewhat degraded condition of these gloves, they retain enough of their sumptuous embroidered decoration to convey the luxury of the highest quality embroidered components of late Tudor and early Stuart era dress1 . Portraits from the period are replete with minutely detailed representations of entire garments incorporating emblematic symbols and complex stylized patterns, found on men's doublets and hose, women's bodices and skirts, and fashionable accessories worn by both sexes...
by Jonathan Tavares
This portrait miniature of Charles I is one of the most technically accomplished examples of professional seventeenth-century needlework. In addition to this miniature, there are two examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum (812-1891), one in the Wallace Collection in London, and another in Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen. Like a painting in silk thread, this miniature represents the merging of two English artistic traditions...
by Andrew Morrall
This embroidered panel is currently on display in the “Nature and Pastoral” section of the exhibition, English Embroidery from the Metropolitian Museum of Art, 1580-1700: ’Twixt Art and Nature.. It is worked in silk thread on a canvas base measuring 17 1/8 x 22 ¼ in. (43.4 x 56.5 cm), and may be dated to some point in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. It constitutes one of the most popular themes of English seventeenth-century figurative embroidery, that of the “companionate couple.”...
Thomas Hope: Regency Designer
Designer, patron, collector, and author Thomas Hope (1769 - 1831) is one of the major figures in the history of British design and helped shape and define what became known as "Regency Style," a mode of design and decoration that continues to be influential.
by Shax Riegler
Even before the advent of electricity, candlesticks were a luxurious – perhaps even inessential – implement. In his Directions to Servants (1745) Jonathan Swift pointed out that it was just as easy to “stick your candle in a bottle, or with a lump of butter against the wainscot, in a powder-horn, or in an old shoe, or in a cleft stick, or in the barrel of a pistol, or upon its own grease on a table, in a coffee cup or a drinking glass, a horn can, a tea pot, a twisted napkin, a mustard pot, an ink-horn, a marrowbone, a piece of dough, or you may cut a hole in a loaf, and stick it there.”...
by Nina Stritzler-Levine
The exhibition Thomas Hope: Regency Designer at the Bard Graduate Center focuses on an aspect of curatorial inquiry that is concerned with how works of art are interpreted and displayed. Whether it is a museum, gallery or even a home, display spaces construct and constitute meaning. In the case of the curatorial interpretation of Thomas Hope, where and why works of art were shown together has a particular historical relevance because many of the objects in the exhibition were collected or designed by Hope and first shown at his townhouse on Duchess Street in London after 1802. Hope envisioned his townhouse as both a private domain and public space for visitors to see his collection. The rooms on the first floor were conceived as a unified ensemble. Furnishings and works of art were arranged thematically and to signify quality in design and interior decoration. Thus the interior plan of Duchess Street identifies interiors by place names such as Egypt and India or refers to a specific work of art that was the centerpiece of an ensemble...
