The Deedee Wigmore Gallery is divided into three distinct areas, dedicated to The Aesthetic movement, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the art of Louis C. Tiffany.
The Aesthetic Movement in America
This area of the gallery provides examples of the Aesthetic movement, which emphasized art in the production of furniture, metalwork, ceramics, stained glass, textiles, wallpapers, and books. The movement evolved from British reform ideas of the mid-nineteenth century; at the same time, its artists and craftsmen embraced ornament and forms from a variety of non-Western sources, especially from Japan, China, and the Islamic world. The domestic interior best expressed the taste of the Aesthetic era, with designers such as Herter Brothers and Louis C. Tiffany commissioned to fabricate furnishings and decorative finishes to create harmonious and integrated room ensembles.
The Arts and Crafts Movement in America
The second area of the room features early twentieth-century examples of Arts and Crafts–movement objects. Not so much a style as an approach, the movement advocated hand craftsmanship, honesty of materials, and minimal decorative embellishment. In the United States, its most successful proponents were the studios of Gustav Stickley on the East Coast and Greene and Greene on the West Coast. Idealistic utopian and craft-centered communities such as Rose Valley in Pennsylvania and Byrdcliffe in New York forged individual styles within the Arts and Crafts mode. The movement saw the beginning of a larger movement of art pottery, with progenitors in centers that crossed the country.
The Art of Louis C. Tiffany
This area features works by Louis C. Tiffany, one of America's most acclaimed and multitalented artists working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the more than fifty years that his career spanned, from the 1870s through the 1920s, Tiffany embraced virtually every artistic and decorative medium, designing and directing his various studios to produce artistic windows, mosaics, lighting, glass vases, pottery, metalwork, enamels, jewelry, textiles, and interiors.
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