#marble french

[tapakah0]

[tragediambulante]

Morpheus, Jean Antoine Houdon, 1777

[uwmspeccoll]

Marbled Monday

This sunny Marbled Monday, as we here in Wisconsin wait for the weather to catch up to the seasons and feel spring-like, I’ve selected The Seasons by Scottish poet and playwright James Thomson (1700-1748). There have been many editions of The Seasons since its first publication as a complete series of four poems in 1730—this one was published by The Nonesuch Press in 1927. It features five illustrations by an artist simply identified as Jacquier, who I have been unable to otherwise identify. The images are copperplate engravings made by C. Sigrist that were hand colored using watercolor through stencils at The Curwen Press. 

The marbling is a very curly French curl or snail pattern, featuring red, blue, orange, cream, and a greenish-grey. This pattern is created by first dropping colors in to the water bath and then taking a comb with regularly spaced teeth and swirling it in the water bath to make the snail pattern. 

View more Marbled Monday posts.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[empirearchives]

“What Napoleon criticised in the statue could perhaps be summed up in one thing: his uneasiness at the sight of his own nudity. And it was precisely his nudity that was felt to be problematic, even shocking. But how did Canova come to have the odd idea of representing Napoleon as a nude divinity?”

— Valérie Huet, Napoleon I: A New Augustus?

The nude statue of Napoleon in question:

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Charles Cordier (1827-1905) "Bust of a Moor"

[disease]

DENYS PUECH / "LA SIRÈNE" / 1893 [marble | height: 53 ½"]

[ragpicker-and-poet]

[teleostuber]

that drawing you did of brian eating burger is my favorite thing ever it's so cute

Thrilling sequel to brian eats a burger

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Jules Blanchard (French, 1832-1916) Buste de jeune femme, 1861 Musée Antoine-Lécuyer, Saint-Quentin

[vintagehomecollection]

Contemporary Apartments, 1982

[bombnails]

@honeybabysets

[tragediambulante]

Mercure attachant ses talonnières, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, 1744

[uwmspeccoll]

Marbled Monday

It's been a minute since we last posted for Marbled Monday but we're back with an exciting combed French curl or snail pattern! This pattern was created by dropping colors onto the water bath, creating a gel-git (or zig-zag) pattern with a stylus, then combing it once perpendicular to the gel-git with a fine-toothed comb creating a pattern called nonpareil, and finally using a wide-toothed comb to create the characteristic curly swirly snails. This particular pattern uses blue, maroon, cream, and yellow. The marbled paper was used for both the front and back covers and the endpapers of the book.

The book inside the lovely marbled binding is a 1779 ninth edition of Sketches from Nature, which features "upwards of one hundred portraits, or characters, of the most conspicuous persons in the kingdom." This edition was printed for George Kearsly (or Kearsley, 1739-1790) and was written by an anonymous author. It is a satirical piece with humorous profiles of well-known figures and so the names are all printed with blanks in the middles (ie: Mr. G_____s), but in our copy all of the names have been filled in by an industrious owner.

View more Marbled Monday posts.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[empirearchives]

Bust of Napoleon Bonaparte by Antoine-Denis Chaudet, c. 1800s

Musées d'Angers

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Pierre Julien (1731-1804) "Ganymède versant le nectar à Jupiter changé en aigle" ("Ganymede pouring nectar to Jupiter changed into an eagle") Marble Located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

[disease]

"HARMLESS WOMAN" LOUISE BOURGEOIS | 1969/81 [white marble | 39 x 14 ½ x 13 ½"]