Wednesday 17 August 2016

More Arts and Crafts Delights During a Visit to Italy. Part 2 of 2: Rome

A few more pictures and a bit more information on WMSC member Gianna Wichelow's summer visit to Italy.

I didn't plan to find anything of an Arts and Crafts nature while in Italy; that wasn't in the plans. But when I got to Rome, just a bit of googling resulted in me deciding to carve out some time to visit two promising locations.

Just as Florence has its English church, St. Mark's, so Rome has its American church, St. Paul's Within the Walls (Episcopal), noted for being the first Protestant church built in Rome. Designed by George Edmund Street in Gothic Revival Style, it opened in 1880 and features- wait for it - a stunning set of mosaics by Edward Burne-Jones!

Which is all very exciting until I got there and found out that the murals were OUT FOR REPAIR (estimate time: a year) and so they'd hung printed screens to approximate the look of the mosaics, which I thought was very good of the chuch, but I wanted to see the real thing! Well, I guess I'll have to go back when they're in place once more! You can see pictures of the real things here, on the church's website.

And now this, straight from Wikipedia:

Burne-Jones designed cartoons which he sent to Venice, together with specifications for the colours to be used. The Venice and Murano Glass and Mosaic Company mounted tesserae onto the cartoons, and the resulting assemblies were then installed in the church. The selection of colours, based on sample tiles sent to England by the company, was a collaboration between Burne-Jones and William Morris. Burne-Jones did not travel to Italy to supervise the work, instead sending his assistant, Thomas Rooke. There are four Burne-Jones mosaics. The Annunciation and The Tree of Life, both completed in 1894, are over successive arches of the chancel, leading towards the apse, whose semi-dome displays Christ Enthroned in the Heavenly Jerusalem, completed in 1885. The fourth mosaic, known as The Earthly Paradise or The Church Militant, lower down on the wall of the apse, was completed in 1907 by Rooke, after Burne-Jones's death.



































My second point of interest was the Quartiere Coppedè, also known as Rome's fantasy neighbourhood. Okay, this is a little crazy. Architect Gino Coppede was basically given carte blanche and he had fun with it, erecting the buildings between 1913 and 1927. You can read more about it in this New York Times article from 1997, "Rome's Mischevious Architect". My pictures don't do it justice (these do) but you can get an idea of the jumble of styles, all exuberantly justaposed, from Medieval to Baroque, Ancient Greek to Art Deco. Once you go under the massive arch that welcomes you, you'll be in the Piazza Mincia with its ornate frog fountain... it's just gorgeous, fun and untamed, and, not surprisingly horror film director Dario Argento has filmed some of his movies here. The decoration is remarkable, and certainly elements of Art Deco and Art Nouveau feature prominently. Morris may not have thought much of it, but I think it's worth a visit for your next Roman holiday.

















Some Arts and Crafts Delights During a Visit to Italy. Part 1 of 2: Florence

WMSC member Gianna Wichelow spent June in Florence and Rome... and on her travels found a few exciting spots that she recommends for future trips if you're an admirer of Morris and his circle. Here are a few photographs:

St. Mark's English Church, Florence, was founded by the Reverend Charles Tooth, and its current site (a 15th-century palazzo) was purchased in 1880. John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, a second-wave Pre-Raphaelite and uncle/teacher to Evelyn de Morgan, designed and created the wall and ceiling decorations at his own expense, with stencil designs by George Frederick Bodley. The church was active by 1881, and the premises were enlarged by the purchase of the site next door. The striking paintings inside the church are by mostly unidentified Italian artists. William Holman Hunt lost his young wife in Florence, where she is buried. He set her wedding ring into the stem of a chalice he designed for the church. The terrible flooding of the Arno in 1966 damaged the lower part of the stencilled walls, now covered up.

Stanhope had close connections to Edward Burne-Jones and George Frederic Watts. And his home, Sandroyd, was designed by Philip Webb, whose only previous house design up to that point had been William Morris's Red House.

The church remains very active and is a warm and welcoming place, featuring opera performances and lots of visiting choirs. But whatever your interest, I urge you to visit it if you're in Florence.









































The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum has a stunning exhibition on, "Tra Arte e Moda," which explores the links and inspirations between art and fashion, artists and designers. This is an outstanding collection of ideas and objects, and one of the display cases featured examples of esthetic dress. Photographs of Jane Morris, William's wife, were taken by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (and others) to inspire his paintings, and those paintings helped inspire a new, looser form of dress which Liberty helped popularize.

































Monday 15 August 2016

Symposium: Morris and the Natural World

On the weekend of June 25/26, the William Morris Society of Canada enjoyed a gorgeous Toronto weekend, full of nature and Morris.

The Saturday comprised a full-day symposium on the topic, Morris and the Natural World. The speakers and their subjects were as follows:

Designing a new world: Arts and Crafts communities in the Cotswold countryside
Mary Greensted, curator, lecturer and writer
(United Kingdom)

Designing with Flora and Fauna: Morris’s Top 20
Sheila Latham, author, librarian, visual artist
(Canada)

Morris’s Garden at Red House
Sarah Rutherford, writer, garden historian and horticulturist
(United Kingdom)

Natural Heritage Preservation: a Canadian Example
Jim Hill, Superintendent of Heritage, Niagara Parks Commission
(Canada)

The Beauty and Romance of Arts and Crafts Gardens
Sarah Rutherford (see above)

The audience of 80 enjoyed the lectures and lunch at University College, on the U of T campus.

On the Sunday, there was a tour and tea in one of Wychwood Park's most beautiful Arts and Crafts homes. And Toronto didn't disappoint: it had been a beautiful June, unusually warm and sunny and the city was looking beautiful, and Wychwood Park especially so.

Don't forget to keep checking our Future Events page (see tab at the top) to see what else we are getting up to this year!


Photo by Ann Gagné

A Visit to St. James' Cemetery

Remember last summer and how often our planned walk got rained out? Well this May, we finally held our St. James' Cemetery walk, led by member and past-President, John Wichelow.

We learned about the history of this lovely Gothic Revival Chapel of St.-James-the-Less which was opened in 1861 and remains an important example of this architectural style in Canada.

We toured the cemetery and its eclectic collection of headstones, crypts and statuary, honouring some of Canada's most illustrious characters, including the mausoleum (below), an Egyptian Revival edifice which is the final resting place of Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, Sir Kazimierz Stanislaus Gzowski (1813 – 1898).

Along the route, the song "Galway Bay" was rendered by several members in homage to William Hume Blake, QC (1809 – 1870), an Irish-Canadian jurist and politician. His ancestors were counted among the Tribes of Galway.

The walk ended just in time. Those of us who ended up in the pub, the House on Parliament got there just as the rain started, and so we rounded out the afternoon with good cheer and beer well into the evening.