Decorative Sunday with Henry P. Kirby
These charming sketches are the work of New York architect Henry P. Kirby (1853 - 1915). Architectural Compositions contains fifty loose plates printed on Whatman paper and housed in a portfolio. It was published in Boston in 1892 by Bates, Kimball & Guild, publishers of one of the United State’s leading architectural journals of that time, The Architectural Review (Boston), not to be confused with the longer running Architectural Review still in publication out of London.
Kirby would have been working as a draftsman for George B. Post at the time of publication, for whom he later worked as lead designer before striking out on his own. Some of the subject matter also evokes Kirby’s time in France, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts after training with his father, also an architect. Per the subtitle, some of the sketches were “made in connection with actual projects,” while many were “the result of study during leisure moments.” I found Kirby’s eye for the human elements in his sketches particularly endearing, from the foreground figures to details on the buildings themselves, like open widows and overgrown foliage, or what looks like a duvet cover hanging out to dry (first image above).
For any music buffs reading, the final sketch includes some bars of "Très-jolie" from the opéra comique smash hit La Fille de Madame Angot.
Our copy of Architectural Compositions was gifted to UWM by Gustav A. Elgeti in 1966.
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-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern
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One last bookplate which is so charming I have to provide some comments (See the other ones here, here and here.)
This is the bookplate (or ex libris) of German politician, lawyer and Enlightenment figure Johann Daniel von Olenschlager (1711-1778), It depicts an ideal of a library which is made clear already in the Latin motto inscribed in the elaborate, Rococo frame, which translated into something like “I wish to be both useful and to be of enjoyment.”
The depicted library room is an open loggia covered with a roomy vault. The side walls are entirely covered by bookshelves, giving that pleasant, comfortable impression of being lost in a sea of reading material. The floor, we may imagine, is a cool stone floor - because at the rear end, the loggia opens generously to a gorgeous Baroque garden. The shadows falling from the pillars to the left, the fountain trickling and the garland having from the roof to frame the entrance all give away a vague feeling of an eternal summer day. Pruned trees, a gravel path and a balustraded stair emanate an atmosphere of peace and order. Two figures move towards us from the garden; we can almost hear the bright voices of our friends approaching. In a few moments they will be with us, laughingly teasing us to finally drop our books and get out into the sunshine with them. I wouldn’t mind at all.
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i had a thought that like since annabeth is an architect, she's also a genius artist. a more logical artist, but an artist nonetheless. which means: annabeth loves drawing too. sometimes she doodles random things on a scrap paper but no one notices the doodles because they think she's doing math problems. inspiration for a temple strikes annabeth and her hands itch for a pen and paper. she also draws percy. he keeps all the drawings annabeth made that she gives him or that she discards. (he has a box full of them and some are displayed on refrigerators and walls.) she's also good at digital art because of building rendering.
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Decorative Sunday
This week we present some dados from volume 9 of the Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details, published in twelve volumes by Bernard Quaritch between 1890 and 1913. A dado is the lower part of a wall, below the dado rail and above the skirting board, that is often given over to decorative treatment.
Issued under the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Madhu Singh, the Jeypore Portfolio was prepared under the supervision of Colonel Samuel Swinton Jacob, Indian Staff Corps, Engineer to the Jeypore State, and Lala Ram Bakhsh, head draftsman and teacher in the Jeypore School of Art, and was photo-lithographed by William Griggs of London, the inventor of photo-chromo-lithography. The Portfolio was intended to serve as a record of the architectural heritage of the Jeypore State and the north-west region of Rajasthan. As a record, it would “rescue (such) designs from oblivion and give them new life.”
Of the 12-volume set we only hold volumes 7 (String and band patterns), 9 (Dados), and 10 (Parapets). These have been digitized and may be found in our digital collections.
View other posts from the Jeypore Portfolio.
View more Decorative Sunday posts.
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The Good Housekeeping Complete Guide to Traditional American Decorating, 1982
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It’s been 3 fucking hours! LET ME IN ALREADY! Let me play before I go back to uni again!
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Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (No. 3)
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative. The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that "the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light". The interior "is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao's estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country". The atrium, which Gehry nicknamed The Flower because of its shape, serves as the organizing center of the museum.
When the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world's most spectacular buildings in the style of Deconstructivism (although Gehry does not associate himself with that architectural movement), a masterpiece of the 20th century. Architect Philip Johnson described it as "the greatest building of our time", while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as "a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium," its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales. Herbert Muschamp praised its "mercurial brilliance" in The New York Times Magazine. The Independent calls the museum "an astonishing architectural feat".
Source: Wikipedia
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