Museum accessions

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2002 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

The wasp waist, achieved with the help of a corset and a tightly cinched belt, became popular at the end of the nineteenth century, coinciding with the emergence of the art nouveau style in the decorative arts. The two came together in the creation of elaborate belt buckles, which were produced by virtually all the leading jewelers of the period. Dr. and Mrs. Karl Kreuzer of Munich assembled an extraordinary collection of these ornaments, the only truly functional jewelry form, and it has recently been acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

The collection includes examples by nearly all the important jewelry companies and designers of the turn of the twentieth century, from Josef Hoffmann at the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna to Georg Jensen in Copenhagen, and from Rene Lalique in Paris to Liberty and Company in London, and Tiffany and Company in New York City The buckle illustrated here is one of several in the collection made by Piel Freres of Paris, a firm that concentrated on producing beautiful objects at reasonable prices, and thus was instrumental in popularizing the art nouveau style. Although less well known today Piel Freres exhibited at the Expositions Universelles in Paris in 1867 and 1900, winning a grand prize at the latter.

Also new at the Virginia Museum is the ivory-veneered fall-front secretary illustrated below It was owned by Anne Willing Bingham (1764-1801) of Philadelphia, the beautiful daughter of one very rich man and the wife of another. The secretary made the journey from Vizagapatam in southwestern India in 1785, aboard the United States, owned by her father, Thomas Willing, and the first American ship to engage in trade with India. It was a gift to the shipowner's fashionable daughter from a wealthy Englishman named Campbell.

There could not have been a more appropriate recipient, for Anne and her husband, William Bingham, were among Philadelphia's most elite, and Mansion House, their lavish residence, is said to have been an expanded version of the duke of Manchester's house in London. Mansion House was a magnet for the powerful, both native and foreign. A visitor in 1787 recorded a gala there that "in style and elegance was infinitely superior to anything lever saw....my eyes were dazzled with the splendor of the sight" Charles Bulfinch remarked that its "white marble staircase, valuable paintings, the richest furniture... make it a palace."

The desk is made of sandalwood, with the sheets of ivory veneer pegged onto it. The incised decoration, highlighted with black lac, includes an imaginative mixture of motifs drawn from Western architectural prints and eighteenth-century English furniture. Vizagapatam was the center for this elaborate type of furniture made for the Western market beginning in the early eighteenth century.

In its quest to present great art from all cultures and historical periods around the globe, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired the renowned collection of Islamic art assembled by Maan Z. Madina, professor emeritus in the department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in New York City. The most accessible manifestation of a complex civilization, the art of Islam has an immediate visual appeal that can open the door to exploring a culture that is increasingly in the news but is often little understood in the West.

The Madina collection, which represents the full range of Islamic decorative expression, focuses on decorative arts, architectural decoration, and calligraphy from the seventh through the nineteenth century It includes tiles and other ceramics, textiles, glass, metalwork, and more than fifty specimens of calligraphy Despite the vast temporal and geographic boundaries it encompasses, Islamic art displays a number of common features, not the least of which is the constant interweaving of beauty and function, as exemplified by the exquisite oil-burning glass lamp illustrated above.

Another common element is a preference for covering surfaces with repeating patterns of geometric or vegetal elements, giving an impression of unending repetition thought to evoke the infinite nature of God. The mosaic tile illustrated below is an example. Such elaborate tiles were used to ornament important buildings, both religious and secular; lending color and distinction to structures built of sand-colored clay brick.

The acquisition of the Madina collection, which was made possible in part by a generous gift from Camilla Chandler Frost, effectively doubles the size of the museum's already eminent Islamic holdings.