Displaying items by tag: woodwork

Long before this quiet New Jersey couple met, little did they know that together they were destined to form one of the greatest collections of folk art in America. As a teenager, the wife saved her babysitting money to purchase her first piece—a small side table, at which her mother just shook her head. The husband grew up on a ranch in Nevada where he learned the skills to become a superb woodworker, gaining an understanding for the craftsmanship involved in antiques.

Their prairie-style home is set on a secluded hilltop and houses just a portion of their...

Decorative details by Lockwood de Forest, architectural woodwork by Stanford White, painted friezes by Francis D. Millet and George Yewell, stencil-work by Samuel Colman, embroideries by Candace Wheeler -- the Park Avenue Armory’s Veterans Room is a masterpiece of the American Aesthetic Movement -- an avant-garde style rooted in the belief that everything should be beautiful. Built in the late nineteenth century, the opulent space was designed and executed by Louis C. Tiffany, Associated Artists -- a cooperative firm of designers led by the visionary Louis Comfort Tiffany. The room is one of the few surviving spaces by Associated Artists, and one of only two interiors by Tiffany and White ever created -- the second one being the Armory’s library, which is located next door to the Veterans Room.

The Park Avenue Armory, which boasts an extraordinary ensemble of nineteenth-century period rooms, has announced that it will revitalize its Veterans Room as part of an ongoing, $200-million project that has helped turn its five-story landmark building...

To keep reading this article about the Park Avenue Armory's Veterans Room, which includes decorative elements by Lockwood de Forest, Stanford White, Candace Wheeler, and more, visit InCollect.com.

The art of French lacquer developed in the late 17th century in response to the rising popularity of Japanese and Chinese lacquerware and quickly led to concentration of gilder-varnisher workshops in the Saint-Antoine quarter in Paris where the cabinetmakers and joiners were already established. The French even developed their own technique, Vernis Martin — as recently retraced in an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris — that enabled the craftsmen to generate blues, greens, and yellows, in addition to Asian reds and blacks. Vernis Martin was soon used to cover all kinds of materials and decorative objects, from woodwork paneling to musical instruments and even horse-drawn carriages.

While lacquering is most traditionally associated with wood and bamboo, it can also be applied on metal, and it is this technique that the skilled craftsmen and women at Hermès have applied in miniature to a new limited edition collection of three new watches under the Arceau Cheval d’Orient name.

Boscobel House & Gardens in Garrison, New York has started renovating its iconic Federal style mansion. The project, which began with sweeping historical upgrades to the house’s entry hall, signals long-term future changes for the estate.

Boscobel was built around 1808 in Westchester County by States and Elizabeth Dyckman. The house was saved from demolition, dismantled and moved to its present site in Putnam County in the late 1950s. In 1961, Lila Acheson Wallace and her husband, DeWitt, the founders of “Reader's Digest,” restored Boscobel and opened the estate to the public. In 1977, Berry B. Tracy, then a curator with the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, helmed a complete decorative renovation of Boscobel. Boscobel has long been considered one of America’s finest historic homes of the Federal Period.

The renovation to Boscobel’s grand entry hall will include outfitting the walls with new period-appropriate wallpaper, updating the floor with a new historic floorcovering, and re-painting the woodwork trim. Decisions regarding the wallpaper, floorcovering, and paint were based on extensive research performed by Boscobel’s Curator and Collection Manager, Judith Pavelock.

Boscobel’s project for the grand entry hall is slated to be completed this spring.

Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of the enterprise software company, Oracle, has loaned a portion of his inimitable collection of Japanese art to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for the exhibition In the Moment: Japanese Art from the Larry Ellison Collection. The show presents 64 objects that span over 1,000 years.

Highlights from the show include significant works by well-known artists of the Momoyama (1573-1615) and Edo (1615-1868) periods as well as important examples of religious art, lacquer, woodwork and metalwork. Ellison assembled a large portion of his collection with the help of the Asian Art Museum’s former director, Emily Sano. Serving as Ellison’s personal art curator and advisor, Sano helped the billionaire acquire hundreds of important Japanese art objects including 17^th century folding screens by Kano Sansetsu and 18^th century paintings by Maruyama Okyo.

In the Moment: Japanese Art from the Larry Ellison Collection will be on view at the Asian Art Museum through September 22, 2013.