Public Lecture: "Wax Coral and Woolen Pac-Men: The Domestic Handicraft Paradigm, 1810-2010"

Dec. 2, 2010 4pm 7191 Helen C. White Hall "Wax Coral and Woolen Pac-Men: The Domestic Handicraft Paradigm, 1810-2010" Amateur domestic handicraft had become an enormously popular hobby by the middle of the nineteenth century. Women pasted shells on boxes, formed wax flowers, designed scrap screens, cut cardboard into workbaskets, sewed fish scales to silk, twisted wire, spattered ink over ferns, stuffed birds. Through close readings of Victorian craft discourse, this talk analyzes the way women articulated their cultural concerns through handicraft. Domestic handicraft gave women a way to articulate their own modernity and industrial prowess, while simultaneously critiquing the modern financial world in which they lived. The talk concludes by explaining how the core values of contemporary craft actually update ideas first articulated by the Victorians. Talia Schaffer is an associate professor of English at Queens College CUNY and the Graduate Center CUNY. She is the author of The Forgotten Female Aesthetes; Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England (2001); co-editor with Kathy A. Psomiades of Women and British Aestheticism (1999); editor of Lucas Malet's 1901 novel, The History of Sir Richard Calmady (2003); and editor of Literature and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (2006).  Novel Craft: Fiction and the Victorian Domestic Handicraft (Oxford, forthcoming), is about the history of amateur handicraft and codes of aesthetic and economic representation in the mid-Victorian novel. She has published widely on noncanonical women writers, material culture, popular fiction, aestheticism, and late-Victorian texts.

New Course for Spring 2011!!!

Kate Smith, visiting post-doc fellow at the Chipstone Foundation, will be teaching a course next semester on 18th century British design:

Art History 565:

The Idea of Design in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century

Prof. Kate Smith

Rm. 166, Elvehjem Building (Chazen)

Thursday, 2:00-4:00

Course Description

This course explores “design” as a process, a concept and a form of technology in the context of eighteenth-century Britain. As well as surveying different design styles, this course also interrogates the idea of design as a system of knowledge and a technology of thinking.

Overview

This course explores “design” as a process, a concept and a form of technology. Beginning with an analysis of design in terms of “style” and aesthetics, this course goes on to examine design in the context of eighteenth-century Britain, a context dominated by a new focus on economy, science and the dissemination of knowledge, to view its impact on society and culture at large. It interrogates the idea of design as a system of knowledge and a technology of thinking to assess how the professionalization of design and its increasingly widespread practice affected systems of thought.

The course will teach students to use and interrogate a variety of primary sources including objects, source books, pattern books, drawing books, correspondence and accounts. Students will particularly benefit from first hand interaction with the Chipstone Foundation collection in Milwaukee as part of the course. The course materials also draw on a wide selection of secondary readings covering the work of scholars of eighteenth-century Britain, design studies, material culture, economics, technology and visual culture.

Photos from Charles Hummel's Visit

One page of the many Dominy shop records, now in the ownership of Winterthur Museum and Garden, Winterthur, DE.

Patterns used for table legs, and turned pieces.

Bedsteads made by the Dominys.

The best sort of scholarship: written records to go along with objects!

A carving tool with decorative scroll work on the blade.

A Visit from Charles Hummel

Charles Hummel, a retired curator at Winterthur Garden and Museum, gave a public talk on the Dominy family workshops on November 9 and was the guest speaker the following day in Prof. Martin's Early American Decorative Arts Class.  The Dominys owned a woodworking and clock shop in East Hampton, New York, from the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s.  For the audience's viewing pleasure, here is a clip of Dr. Hummel answering a question that Theresa Haffner-Stearns has about chair legs.

Lynn Sorgatz, The Pen Dude; Guest Post by Emma Silverman and Amy Brabender

Lynn Sorgatz in his workshop.

Lynn displays some of his handiwork.

Lynn Sorgtatz's studio: in the foreground, cellulose acetate pen bodies, in the background, some of the machines Lynn uses to make them.

Emma and Amy listen attentively about Lynn's process.

An example of Lynn Sorgatz's work- a pen made of ivory-like cellulose acetate and pearl.

Another example of Lynn Sorgatz's work- his patented Triad pen made of cellulose acetate.

A colorful display of raw materials used for pen bodies: cellulose acetate, celluloid, hard rubber, and acrylic.

Emma, Amy and Stefan, members of the Exhibition Committee for the Material Culture Conference this spring, went on a research trip last Friday. They ventured out to Orfordville Wisconsin to visit the workshop of Lynn Sorgatz, an artist-engineer. Sorgatz is one of a handful of craftspeople in the United States who restore and construct fountain pens using vintage designs and materials. He uses labor-intensive techniques such as lathing and polishing acrylic and cellulose acetate for the pen bodies, hand tooling metals for ornamentation, and carving shells to decorate the exteriors. Sorgatz's pens will be exhibited on campus in conjunction with the conference, and he will be lecturing about his work and the history of pen making in Wisconsin on the first evening of the conference. 

The Knitted Bus Shelter Cozy That Rocked State Street, Sept. 30-Oct. 1

Although the shelter cozy is gone, visions of its bright exterior remain.  Thanks to members of the Design Studies Department and the MadisonKnitters' Guild for their hard work.  The Handmade Meaning blog has a nice recap by one of the participants.  Check out other news stories that accompanied the cozy:

from the Design Gallery: http://www.designgallery.wisc.edu/exhibits/knitta/index.html
from the Isthmus: http://www.thedailypage.com/theguide/details.php?event=250151&name=Cozy-Shelter

The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database

In October 2010, Wisconsin Heritage Online newsletter featured the Wisconsin Decorative Arts database for its user-friendliness: "The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database uses a different subject heading thesaurus and a thorough description of the item to make the collection material highly retrievable."

Emily Pfotenhauer created the database as an offshoot of the work she did for her master's thesis in the Art History department.  Each object record contains a wealth of information researched and documented by Pfotenhauer.  Some of the items in the database will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery.  To show the richness of the object records, one only needs to look at a hair wreath from Mayville.   

This database, along with many others, is connected with the Wisconsin Heritage Online, allowing users to enter a search term and receive a variety of results, including decorative arts objects, books, documents, photographs, diaries, newspapers, and more.

CFP: Fashion and Middlebrow Modernism

"Fashion and Middlebrow Modernism
National Conference of the Popular & American Culture Association

April 20-23, 2011 San Antonio, TX
San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter

The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association will hold its National Convention at San Antonio, Texas, on April 20-23, 2011. Proposals are now being accepted for a panel on Fashion and Middlebrow Modernism.

The conception of modernism has been expanded to include literature and culture outside high modernism and the avant-garde. This panel will explore the intersections of highbrow modernism with middlebrow modernism, as well as the development of middlebrow modernism outside of the avant-garde, through the discourses of fashion and beauty culture. Papers on a range of genres and topics are welcome, including:

Fiction, autobiography and biography

Literary production and reputation

Art and art collecting

Film

High fashion

Ready to wear

Fashion cycles

Fashion markets

Designer furniture and décor

Advertising

Popular Culture

Beauty culture

Children and fashion

Pets and fashion

Gender and sexuality and fashion

Class, race, age and fashion

Abstracts of 300-400 words may be submitted to Professor Lisa Walker (lwalker@usm.maine.edu) by December 15, 2010. Please include a working title and a brief biography of 100 words with your submission. Email submissions are preferred. Registration and conference information is available at http://www.pcaaca.org/conference/national.php.

Visions of Belter

Allusions to Belter.

The artist, Josh Hebbert, looking artsy and contemplative.

Inspired by Prof. Martin's Early American Decorative Arts class and the field trip to the Milwaukee Art Museum, artist Joshua Hebbert created a  wooden bench reminiscent of the Belter sofa in  the Chipstone Foundation's collection.  "I used a pallet for the basic structure, and then added decorative elements out of OSB to give it a backrest and armrests," he says.  Nice work!


Here was the work day that led to the sofa:
 

1.  made coffee

2.  paced around and feel listless

3.  made a to do list

4.  got necessary items crossed off to do list

5.  decided that I should sit down and collage

6.  realized that I didn't have room on my table to collage

7.  started cleaning off the table, only to find that I didn't have any space to put my stuff

8.  made a bench

9.  made it Victorian

Joel Huntley's Ceramic Demonstration

Huntley with AH363 students.

Joel Huntley, a local potter, recently demonstrated 18th century ceramic techniques for Prof. Martin's class, "Early American Decorative Arts: 1620-1840" at the Art Lofts.  Techniques included: slip trailing, joggling, and mocha diffusion, seen here in the photograph.   This process employs a tobacco and oxide mixture that, when dripped onto the slip, creates spider-like motifs.  Huntley owns the Wisconsin Pottery in Columbus, Wisconsin, and his work is featured at the Smithsonian Institution, among other locations.