Book Reviews Applied Design
...a society of artists who devote themselves to Book Reviews applied design. Their most important work lies in the application of pictorial designs to the decora- Deborah Sugg-Ryan tion of walls, and the designing of various hang- ings.4 Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity by Christopher Reed (New Haven & The Daily Mail called the Omega Workshops’ London: Yale University Press for The Bard Graduate exhibit a “Post-Impressionist room:” Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, The wall panels surrounded by plain rectangular and Culture, New York, 2004) ISBN 0-300-10248-8, surfaces of blue, strawboard colour, and dark 324 pages, B/W and color illustrations, index. (hard- chocolate, represent—if so crude a word may be cover) $45.00. used for an art that tries to avoid the representa- tion of anything approaching reality—dancing Footnotes begin on page 100. figures, or rather, the abstract rhythm and volume of dancing figures, expressed in systems of The Idol is still Prettiness, with its mid-Victorian languish spheric intersecting curves tinted in rose-colour of the neck, and its skin is “greenery-yallery,” despite and light green. the Post-What-Not fashionableness of its draperies. This family party of strayed and Dissenting Aesthetes, It described the furniture as “severe in line and star- however, were compelled to call in as much modern tling in colour and applied decoration.” The marquetry talent as they could find, to do the rough and masculine was “of distinctly cubist character” and the carpet was work without which they knew their efforts would not “geometrically patterned in daring though tastefully rise above the level of a pleasant tea-party or command contrasted colours.” 5 The Arts and Crafts movement more attention.1 influenced the clean lines and stark simplicity of the In 1913 the artist Wyndham Lewis, best known room’s furniture.
[Show full text]