Herter brothers biography of donald

Most of these important photographs are given at least a half page, but unfortunately, some of the most evocative interior photographs, such as the Ruggles drawing room or the Lockwood drawing room, are reproduced as only one-quarter-page illustrations.

Herter brothers biography of donald

Following the entries are several pictorial appendices that present photographic details of the characteristic types of marquetry, carving, hardware, and marks found on Herter furniture. Although these images testify to the beauty of Herter work, they are not really linked to the body of the catalogue. Instead of merely providing a simple encyclopedia of some of the elaborate decorations, it might have been more effective to use the details to support arguments in the text.

For example, the technique of cutting out marquetry, discussed on pageallowed for different light and dark contrasts of the same design. It might have been helpful to show details that demonstrated such an effective practice. Although no personal or business papers relating to the Herter firm in the — period have survived, the authors of this catalogue have produced a helpful history of the business by mining a variety of other source material—papers of patrons; public documents such as census and credit records, insurance maps, directories, and period literature; and the artifacts themselves.

The time necessary to conduct such widespread research and the cost of assembling and traveling the accompanying exhibition make the possibility of another major Herter exhibition unlikely for some time. It is therefore important to examine some of the weaknesses of the catalogue. One troubling aspect of the publication is the emphasis upon the uniqueness of the Herter furniture.

Throughout the book, the products of the Herter shop are extolled for their creative individuality, the result of an American environment that encouraged the highest form of creativity away from the guild restrictions of Europe. The concern for American uniqueness also seems to have prevented the authors from making intriguing comparisons and interpretations, particularly in regard to patronage.

The emphasis upon the objects with greatest artistic merit, that is, the showiest, also distorts the picture of the Herter firm as a business. Among their most prominent clients were the Vanderbilts. At Fifth Avenue, in —, they decorated the mansion of Darius Ogden Mills, on the site of part of Rockefeller Center now occupied by the colossal bronze Atlas.

The White House's interiors were extensively renovated during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Executing the designs of architect Charles Follen McKimHerter Brothers created the plaster ceiling and ornately carved oak paneling for the expanded State Dining Room. The firm's workshops also provided the heavily carved paneling for the renovated East Room.

Very few Herter Brothers interiors remain extant. A notable surviving Herter interior is the John Thatcher home, now the Rosemount Museum, in Pueblo, Colorado however, this work was carried out by the firm after the death of Christian Herter and the retirement of his brother, Gustave; connoisseurs and collectors tend to concentrate on the furniture and interiors designed during the brothers' supervision of the firm.

Examples of Herter furniture are in major public collections in the United States. Herter Brothers closed in Christian's son Albert founded Herter Looms ina tapestry and textile design-and-manufacturing firm that was, in a sense, successor to his father's firm. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. InChristian left the firm, which continued to produce fine furniture until Share this: Twitter Facebook.

Like Loading Leave a comment. His forte was the orchestration of exotic materials, and the best of his designs always reveal a harmonious blending of complex decorative techniques. Here we have carving, marquetry, gilding, and painting in polychrome and grisaille, carried out on a form less sculptural than pictorial. And, at expositions in Vienna, Paris, London, and Philadelphia, the nations of the world competed for supremacy in the production of art goods, especially ceramics, glass, bronze, ivories, and exotic metals.

The cabinet, created as a theatrical stage for the display of decorative art, was the quintessential form of the age and offered unlimited possibilities for interpretation. Modeled after a closely related cabinet made about the same time by a well-known British designer, James Lamb of Manchester, it shows Herter reaching toward a new style.

From its delicate brass gallery to the alternating bands of gilt and black that ornament its turned feet, this cabinet is a study in the spectacle that can be achieved in purely gridlike structures. Installed with carefully chosen and arranged ceramic treasures, this cabinet became a dense and herter brother biography of donald performance that proclaimed the command and aesthetic control of its owner.

Herter Brothers took advantage of custom commissions to improve its skills, test the use of rare and exotic materials, and broaden its interpretative range. As the form most given to display and frivolity, the cabinet offered seemingly unlimited potential for expansion and adaptation. Indeed, this composition has come to represent the ultimate incarnation of American aesthetic reform.

Japanese cranes, snakes clenched in their beaks, flank a stylized urn amid a forest of bamboo leaves and flowers. Christian Herter was among the first American designers to adopt Japanese ornament. Godwin and other British furniture makers and architects. Prompted by his son, the Reverend Francis Goodwin, the major, then almost 70 years old, demanded the largest and most ambitious house ever built in Hartford, Connecticut.

At its completion inWoodlands was a vast castle-like structure of Rhode Island gray granite that included an ecclesiastic Gothic mansion with an attached servant wing, a coach house and stables, and twelve acres of sweeping lawns, a pond, flower gardens, a rustic cottage in a grove of trees, and pastures of grazing cows, all within city limits. For all its influence, surprisingly little is known about the business side of Herter Brothers.

The firm seems to have relied on word-of-mouth advertising. Pierpont Morgan and the Reverend Goodwin, for instance, were cousins, contemporaries, and boyhood friends, and Morgan, who first purchased furniture from Gustave Herter inwent on to commission Herter Brothers for increasingly ambitious decorating campaigns. Woodlands was demolished in