 So we're nearly 18, you should be ready to go. Thank you Shreya. Okay great, thank you. So hello everybody and welcome to Aesthetic Encounters which is the third in a series of talks that we're hosting at the Port Mellon Centre in the spring of 2022 by authors of books recently published by the Port Mellon Centre. And so today we're going to be talking with Petra Chu, Max Donnelly, Andrew Rager and the event will be chaired by Liz Pretjohn. I'm going to sort of walk you through some very very quick housekeeping things before I sort of introduce Liz and hand over to her. So just some things to remember. Some of you have been to many of our talks and you know all this already so thanks for bearing with us. So the session will contain three 15 to 20 minute presentations and the whole thing will be followed by a Q&A at the end. Audience members can type questions using the Q&A function. The session will be recorded and it will be made available to the public afterwards. Close captioning is available so click the CC button to enable captions. Yeah and so I think without further ado because I'm really excited to be hearing from all our speakers. I'll just hand over to Liz Pretjohn who is Professor and Head of Department of History of Art at the University of York. And thank you so much Liz for agreeing to chair the session and thank you in advance to all our speakers. Over to you Liz. Well thank you so much Ria for inviting me and to all at the Paul Mellon Centre for inviting me to chair this event. I have in fact spoken in one of these events back in the dim and distant days before we did them on Zoom. So it's a great pleasure to be able to come back and particularly to be able to speak about aesthetic encounters which as will probably become clear is a subject most dear to my heart. That means that it's a real pleasure to see the two books that we're going to talk about this evening produced so beautifully and they just look absolutely right for aesthetic encounters. The second of the books isn't actually available yet but you'll be on tentahooks for it and be looking for it immediately very soon. Now I won't give you the full biographies of our three speakers which are already on the literature for this event so you I hope most people probably will have read them in events or you can go back and read them again and I can assure you that we've got three extraordinary glamorous speakers this evening so I'll just tell you very briefly who's going to speak and what the format will be. So our first speaker will be Max Donnelly who's curator of furniture and woodwork from 1800 to 1900 at the Victorian Albert Museum and he'll speak for about 15 minutes and then hand over to Petra Chu who's Professor Emerita of Art History at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and this it's very fitting that Max and Petra are the co-authors of a wonderful collaborative book on Daniel Cotier called Daniel Cotier Designer Decorator Dealer and so they'll both be speaking about giving different perspectives on the book that they did together and also with Andrew Montana and Suzanne Veldink. So they'll each speak for about 15 minutes and then we'll go over to Andrea Wolk Rager who is the Jesse Hauch Shira Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Andrea will tell us for a little longer about 20 minutes about her new book The Radical Vision of Edward Byrne Jones and that's the one that's just about to appear. Daniel Cotier is already available and I think you are about to see its absolutely wonderful cover. So I will hand over now to Max and look forward to hearing all of your talks. Can I just one more word though? Please feel free to start putting questions into the Q&A. Put your questions into the Q&A and I will attempt to make sure that everybody gets the chance to ask the questions they most want to ask. So now I really am handing over to Max. Thank you very much for your kind introduction. I'm just going to share my screen and also while I do so thank you to the Paul Mellon Centre for hosting this evening and for publishing the book for that matter which is very good of them. So I'm going to use the pronunciation Cotier. The name is English or French or Cotier's ancestors were from the Isle of Man and so may well be some more the British side of pronunciation. So that's why I'm going to stick with that tonight in case you're wondering. So the cover of the book and I will turn now to the first slide if I can. It doesn't seem to move. Try and click and then go to the side sometimes it doesn't recognise it. So if I click on the slide and go to the next, yeah there we go thank you. Yeah my opening slide is a memorial window to Cotier, his own memorial window and I thought I'd open with that. It was almost certainly destroyed in the Blitz but it was in his local church in London and it makes a sort of point I think about Cotier which is that there was a sort of sense of a slight sense of humour in his workshop and they often slipped in portraits of him. In this case extraordinarily I suppose depicting as Christ with the woman of Samaria in his own memorial window but it does tell you something I think a little bit about how the workshop operated and this slight sense of humour that was associated with Cotier and his strong personality which often came out in his work. He was born in Glasgow and he trained in Glasgow then in Edinburgh making stained glass, designing stained glass, making it then progressing to designer. Then he had very formative period in the 1850s when he was in London and he was working probably for a stained glass company in London and in doing evening classes in the working men's college and that was where he came into contact with Fort Maddox Brown and also her who gave him drawing lessons and who remembered him later and also was lectured to by Ruskin. So that's why he says in this ad, an early ad, he opens his own business in Scotland in 1864 and this was published in 67. He points out that he had won a prize in working for a previous company in 1862 but he describes himself as a student of the English and Scottish academies. So he's well trained and as I've just indicated with the avant-garde, pretty early on in his careers there's a formative influence of Ruskin and of Fort Maddox Brown of the Puraphilite Circle and that's something that's going to follow through in his work. Now we were, we make a point in the introduction of the book that there's very little documentation really about Cortier. We didn't have company records, there's a little bit of correspondence but it's pretty sparse. A lot of the interiors have been destroyed or overpainted because he specialized in decorating and producing stained glass and then other things which I'll come on to and also a lot of the things that were made by the company have been sort of dispersed. We were lucky with stained glass, it's usually signed and ceramics are usually signed as well but furniture isn't and a lot of things are sort of out there probably unidentified. So what we had to do was to sort of try and reconstruct them from what we knew and from the some of the documented interiors and so on. The most outstanding one, I happened to be in Glasgow this evening, the most outstanding one which survives is not in Scotland really, is not far from me, a few miles away in Darwin Hill. This was one of the first three, the three major churches that Cortier decorated. The point here being that in Glasgow it was very much a period of his early years in Scotland, a period of sort of establishing himself and experimentation. So here with his gothic revival but very sort of, shall we say, freely treated gothic interior, we see Cortier's imagination really coming alive. And the studio is producing stained glass and painting furniture including this collection dish stands. So we get a sense of the earlier Cortier, this bold figural style for example in the stained glass window. That was in collaboration with a young architect called William Leeper. The next church he decorated was a very informative influence on him. It was with Greek Thompson, Alexander Greek Thompson, as he's known Greek Thompson in certainly in Glasgow and probably beyond. And he was, Cortier was taken in, drawn into this project to decorate the church. Unfortunately it was blitzed but you can see on the right hand side a watercolor showing the interior scheme. The reason I draw it up now to your attention is that this Greek classical, neoclassical influence is very strong in Cortier subsequent work. And another influence which Petra will be describing in detail is the influence of art dealing which comes on actually earlier than I'd realized before the book commenced in the 1860s. And this was the through the influence of John Forbes White, who was one of Cortier's clients and for whom Cortier provided a lot of interior decoration, that fireplace for example. But much earlier on in Aberdeen these charming roundels which decorated Forbes White's cottage. And were subsequently removed showing here Rembrandt and the figure of Emmeline as you can see. Well the move to London after some success in Scotland and the northeast of England. Cortier moves to London and this is when we enter of course into this full blown period of aestheticism where Cortier's art dealing and is operating a much larger business and more ambitious. And it was here in London that he begins to produce much more sophisticated glass. Now of the title of the book, designer, decorator dealer, a title I always think which what it lacks in subtlety makes up for in alliteration and I can say that because I concocted it. The difficult word there I always think is designer with Cortier because we have very few designs that are said to be by him and even they such this window are probably not by him. He was someone who would generate designs and sketches but he basically had a team or freelance and other artists who would work for him. Frederick Vincent Hart was one, Matthew Maris on one occasion we'll see a little later, who worked up his designs. So that's always been a rather tricky thing to pin down I have to admit. But what you could say is I always think I always liken him to William Morris with stained glass because Morris didn't design most of the figures obviously it was all from Byrne Jones or other artists. But like Morris I suspect Cortier had this controlling influence and it was guiding hand and while I mention it Morris you can see his influence very much on that studio on the stained glass with the fruiting backgrounds of fuller backgrounds. Well I wanted to touch on some things which hover on fine art there were the the the North Esk memorials which Van Gogh saw the designs for and commented on nice overlap between the fine and decorative arts and the wonderful interior now painted over which we found a watercolor for which shows the growing aestheticism of Cortier's work in the 1870s and then I'll just run you through some images of the houses which he decorated or glazed many of them in Scotland even though he was operating in England I suspect there are a lot more in England that will emerge but the house decoration for Tennyson for example which I've been after for trying to find out more for a long time lost interior here at Keppelstone House. So this you see clearly here in the ceiling the decorative influence of Alexander Thompson and you can see the way the pictures are hung which Petra will discuss on what can imagine are sort of muted tones in order to enhance the picture collection. The company diversifies into furniture some examples here is rather splendid if you know some just ebonized gilded and painted furniture with classical or what might have been called at the time Pompeian motifs often with figure paintings and producing ceramics as well with fair enough if you've got a kiln producing stained glass then put some some tiles in so ceramics is another thing that the company diversifies into. In the United States where Kotier opens a branch in 1873 and then shuttles to and from London over the next well over the course of his life the next of 18 years we have also a lot of promotion initially in this case thanks to Clarence Cook furniture is exported stained glass is made in London and is shipped over I think what characterizes the American work if I may say so is a sort of scale and sumptuousness we are the entering the sort of gilded age after all maybe the building such as Trinity Church Boston new builds which have got enormous windows there's something about the scale which would have allowed Kotier to express himself and of course the money was available to you know you think of the cost of not just making the windows but shipping them over to America and the import duties and so on it's immensely expensive business but there was a cachet about having this British work another fantastic sets of windows two pairs showing one here in Harvard Memorial Hall and then these fantastic windows for the William Watts Sherman house ceramics to get exported to the US furniture was made in the UK sorry it was made separately in the US in a large workshop there which Petra found descriptions of just to show again with the fine art influence as a prelude to Petra was the increased increasing use and often in American commissions of Millet's parables which were adapted and I always think made aesthetic with an aesthetic sideboard here in the background of this one the parable of the lost coin or numerous versions of Matthew Maris who worked with Kotier not very happily very towards the end certainly was this became countless versions of stained glass windows as well so Kotier working with American artists and just another one of the those sort of hints at the sumptuousness of the the sort of inters including textiles the Portiers here which Kotier would have exported the work to with local makers such as the famous Tiffany this one for his client Williams one of his more important clients who supplied the company with wood and Henry Clay Frick for that matter so you know real kind of top level clients this was after Kotier's death but nevertheless was sort of built on his reputation if you will with his business partner James Ingalls and one of the windows at Clayton and then a very lake piece of decoration a surprising one we found upstate in Sage Chapel at Cornell University from I think around 1900 or early 1900s and then finally the branch in Australia and here after the sumptuousness we also have some huge funds available in Australia for for for interiors and what's interesting about Australia's two things one is that surprisingly so much of the interior decoration survives and has been beautifully restored you can find it in a number of private dwellings which have just been as we'll see in a moment restored this was a partnership John Lam Line founded with Kotier in 1873 they'd worked together in Glasgow and possibly London and we can see here glass very much like the glass produced in England and sometimes it was shipped over from London but it was a bit further away of course so in fact the glass line was the stained glass artist himself and so the difference here was that the glass was made in Australia and some very interesting commissions a synagogue for example the great synagogue at Sydney here's another example of the stained glass made in Australia showing a very different different character the same spirit but different colors different types of glass it's a different entity in its way but all has that sort of Kotier brand as I said a lot of the interior decoration survives it's extraordinary I haven't seen it in the flesh sadly but Andrew Montana wrote it up beautifully and here we have some examples of that which are just extraordinary as the name suggests in Andrews College a lot of these commissions coming from the Scottish diaspora as they did in in the US and in Canada there we go another one a ceiling often the designs shipped over from London so there was two things coming on with Australia really there was the designs and the coming from London and also the the workmen there was Charles Gao who made stained glass there who'd worked with Kotier and then Andrew Wells who'd worked with Kotier in Glasgow and downhill church which I showed at the beginning also went out became a partner in the firm later on so there was this sort of way in which the aesthetic movement spread with Kotier and he actively through his businesses promoted it on three continents the Abbey another fantastic restored interior and then just a little bit more wall painting another charming aspect for me of the Australian work is the incorporation of local flora and fauna which Andrew was also very fond of pointing out and I show to birds native birds of that country and then the other thing finally which marks out Australia and adds very nicely to our knowledge of Kotier's work is the fact that a lot of designs have survived from that last period through Andrew Wells so we do get a sense I guess of some of the interiors that were lost in in the UK and maybe the United States just to get a sense of what Kotier was up to at what his workmen were up to at this time well I have probably come to that's the design for this interior I probably come to the end so I would like to well thank you for listening and may I hand over now to Petra for her presentation thank you. Thank you Max I'm going to try to go to to my slide sharing which so far is not very successful. That's okay Petra if you just pop down to the power point at the bottom. Okay and then yes perfect thanks very much. Okay Max has talked to you about Kotier as decorator and we decided that I would talk a little bit more about Kotier as an art dealer and because the focus of this research seminar is artistic encounters I thought it would be nice to kind focus on what it meant for Kotier a designer who was very much part of the aesthetic movement to market art for the aesthetic home and because my we have only very little time I will read the first part of my paper which is kind of heavy on the quotations and then you know I will do the second part a little bit more you know off the cuff so the first thing that I show you here is an advertising section of the American magazine The Critic and you see there actually three ads for Kotier in the upper right corner where he defines his three different activities. Domestic artistic furniture makers Kotier had a huge furniture shop in New York as Max already mentioned and this was sold in his business in 144 Fifth Avenue then the second part of his activity is high class interior decoration and part of that is the the providing of stained glass to interior and then the third is imported pictures again highest class so that really defines his activity as an art dealer. Now Kotier was unusual among the decorators of his time in that he was also a fine arts dealer he specialized in French and Dutch contemporary landscape painting more specifically the works of the Barbizon school and the school of the Hague in the Netherlands in the late 70s he also became a major promoter of the work of French painter Adolf Monticelli. Kotier's interest in this art may be attributed as Max has already mentioned to his early contacts with John Forbes Weitz the Aberdeen Miller for whom he did much decorative work in the early 1870s. Weitz collected contemporary painting particularly French and Dutch and by 1870 he had acquired a collection that was so substantial that he asked Kotier to design a special gallery to house it. As a collector of contemporary continental art Weitz was a trendsetter in Scotland his example was soon followed by many other industrialists and businessmen and this caused Kotier to realize that the potential of fine arts marketing he began to add paintings watercolors and etchings to the items of domestic decor his Glasgow shop supplied and when he opened new business in London and New York in the 1870s he added art galleries to them a few years after their respective openings and here you see Kotier shop in New York and the first floor would have his shop and on the second floor was his art gallery so they were clearly at this point kind of two separate parts of the business as a decorator steeped in the principles of aestheticism Kotier must have realized that marketing art for the aesthetic home was not a simple task indeed some might even say that it was a contradiction in terms because many decorators of the period were of the opinion that fine art specifically oil paintings had no place in the aesthetic interior as attended to clash with the carefully calibrated unity decorators tried to achieve the British designer Lewis Foreman Day in his book every day art short essays on the arts not fine published in London in 1882 gave the strongest warning against the use of easel paintings in interiors in a chapter called pictures in the house they advocated that anyone who wanted to hang a picture in his house needed to ask herself quote whether a picture or a number of pictures collectively are worth anything at all and if worth hanging whether they are worth the sacrifice of a room to them end quote they propose that as a rule the effect of a room was quote likely to be spoiled and quote by pictures the problem with easel paintings as he and others in this time argued was that they disrupted the decorative harmony of a room not only because they introduced unexpected and unwanted cars and shapes but also because their frame stuck out from the wall past shadows more over their perspectival effects created the suggestion of holes in the wall that were the more disruptive as the patterns of the wallpaper were aimed at creating an impression of flatness while they bemoaned the ill effects of paintings for the unity of the walls he also argued that the decorative scheme of the walls was detrimental to viewing the pictures indeed he concluded quote to introduce a great number of pictures into an ordinary room without detriment either to their effect or to that of the room is impossible they therefore advocated that the lover of pictures arranged his collection in a discreet grouping as you see here in an illustration in his book which also shows how he's trying to overcome the effect of the of the shadows cast by the paintings on the wall even better he said would be to provide for a picture gallery so as to keep the living quarters free from them now by picture gallery they did not necessarily mean a huge specially designed space that might on certain days be open to the public like for example the famous gallery William Henry Vanderbilt in New York City but what he meant really is a room set aside in the house for pictures and here you see a photograph of the collection of Roger Hamilton Bruce mostly bought from Coddier in the Grange in Dornock and you see that here the room is entirely devoted to pictures but the wallpaper you know the room itself is not really is sparsely decorated particularly the walls don't have freezes and and and and busy wallpaper and all that no aesthetic designer not even they went as far as to categorically ban all pictures from the home but all agreed that their integration into the domestic interior presented numerous challenges and that they should be featured very sparingly and what what was intent what they meant by this you kind of see here this is a room in the Phillips house in Boston max already showed another room in the same house which was designed by by the firm of Coddier and by Richard Coddman and you see that there's only one picture in the room and you also notice that it's set in a very unobtrusive frame so not the heavy gilded frames that you know we were seeing earlier now if pictures were admitted to aesthetic interiors what did or should they look like the apartment on east 26th street in New York occupied and designed by the American aesthetic designer Lewis Comfort Tiffany in the early 1880s would have presented an example of pictures well chosen and properly displayed in an aesthetic interior it is for that reason perhaps that this aspect of the apartment's decor was discussed at length in the lavishly illustrated four volume publication artistic houses published by Appleton in 1883-84 with a text attributed to the critic George William Sheldon the first section of the discussion of Tiffany's apartment in artistic houses stresses the importance of unity in the aesthetic interior Sheldon writes quote throughout Mr Tiffany's rooms there is a unity that bonds everything into an ensemble and the spirit of unity is delicacy Sheldon explains in detail how this feeling of unity is achieved particularly when it comes to the walls and the artworks displayed on them discussing the room he writes the walls are paneled with Japanese matting the panels being small say three feet by two some of them painted by hand while others show the plain matting or served as frames for pictures a notable marine sketch by Samuel Coleman fills one of these places very quiet in its neutral tone and carried just far enough to preserve the impression of the scene which the artist designed to depict the frame is nothing but the narrow molding used to tack the matting to the wall and exemplifies strikingly the true effect of the frame as Mr Tiffany conceives it the usual heavy guild enclosure would have shut off this picture from all share in the graceful ease and sweetness void of pride a potential Alexander Pope of its surroundings and acted as a hindrance not only to Mr Coleman's charming and self restrained sketch but also to the general influence of the department of the apartment here the yellow tone of the walls helps to keep the picture flat and make it look like a part of the whole side of the room one feels instinctively that a strong and self assertive piece of painting like a monk oxy would be out of place here that its strength would weaken the spirit and temper of its delicate environment to have placed it on the wall would have been to introduce a blotch or spot of color into an otherwise harmonious scheme moreover to have hatched a comb in a bed with a huge and intrusive frame would have been to make a hole in the wall which is precisely what Mr Tiffany would have been unwilling to do a picture in his view being not intended to deceive the spectator into the belief that he is looking at a piece of outdoors a picture may mystify to be sure but never deceive mystery is good to allure the eye to look and not find out is excellent in art but to deceive his bed because the sense of disappointment after deception has been discovered is disagreeable and quote I'm sorry for this very long quote but I think it is very interesting and contains a number of important observations Coleman sketch and the one that I show you here is is not the one that you know wasn't in Tiffany's interior we don't really know which sketch it was according to Sheldon though the Coleman sketch was self-restrained which meant that it did not call attention to itself and match the subdued colors of the walls Sheldon also mentioned that the sketch was carried just far enough that one could recognize the subject but not so far that it intruded upon the decorative scheme it was set in a flat frame because a huge and bulky one would have created the illusion of a window through which the spectator looked at the outdoors of course this was precisely the effect that since the Renaissance easel paintings had attempted to create but to Sheldon this illusionary effect was deceptive and because deception creates a sense of disappointment once discovered it was undesirable indeed he advocated mystery which to him meant the allure the to allure the eye but not to find out as a decorator and dealer of the aesthetic periods Cartier was certainly sensitive sorry to the precarious position of pictures in the aesthetic home and his painting stock was carefully attuned to it he showed a distinct preference for tonal landscapes loosely painted and broadly conceived the landscapes of Corot whether or not populated by mythological figures were among his specialty but he also carried works by other artists especially French Barbizon school and Dutch Higgs school and I will now take you quickly so with some of the paintings that that's called the adult in so first Corot he was really very well known as a dealer of Corot and held a big Corot show in London so he liked both Corot sketches and also the more finished paintings even with mythological figures and this painting of Orpheus greeting the dawn was actually in his private in his private collection other artists of the Barbizon school Rousseau du Prey you know here is one example this was a work that results to somebody Max already mentioned the American collector Ikebot Williams a purveyor of fine woods who decorated whose house was completely decorated by Cartier and who also bought almost his entire collection from Cartier here another work owned by Ikebot Williams by Charles Dobrini sunset over the river and you see that one of the things that Cartier really liked was sketches rather than finished paintings this huge painting by the Dutch Higgs school painter Anton Mover was one of the more important pictures that went through Cartier's hands it was sold to Benjamin Altman and is now in the Metropolitan Museum where I have to confess it is not shown but it's in the you know in storage. Cartier also did sell figure paintings but these figure paintings generally were not particularly anecdotal so they have a certain stillness that is you know very different from the kind of you know storytelling paintings that were produced a lot of which were produced in Victorian England this was sold to a Canadian collector because both Cartier in London and Cartier in New York also had a lot of business in in Canada. Now what pictures did Cartier not sell because I think that's really an important question. One type is what we you know usually call academic painting this painting by Giraud may serve as an example very widely known through reproduction narrative paintings allegorical paintings paintings that were very clearly delineated that were brightly colored this you would not be able to find in in Cartier's store. More surprisingly perhaps what you also wouldn't find sorry is paintings by the pre-Raphaelites or the next generation of what we call the aesthetic painters and this is surprising because Cartier of course himself particularly when you look at his windows is is closely aligned with the pre-Raphaelites and Max and I have talked a lot about this and it's kind of interesting to see how Cartier's taste for easel paintings which he sold in his store was very different of course from the kind of work that you see in his windows and I think it has to do with the fact that windows in the domestic decor of the late 19th century have a very play a very different role and are very differently looked upon as paintings that are hung on the wall. Another group of another kind of paintings that he did not collect interestingly in America was paintings by contemporary American artists so he didn't really sell paintings by contemporary British artists he also didn't sell paintings by contemporary American artists and I think that was partly because nobody else did you know it was considered that the major dealers in New York whether Nodler or Avery or Cartier all felt that you couldn't make money with American painting but with Cartier it's surprising because he was closely befriended with many American artists including for example the now well-known American artist Albert Pinkham Ryder was a good friend so what Cartier did do was commission these artists Ryder and also others to decorate furniture and here again in furniture as in stained glass it was it was allowed to you know to do narrative paintings or to do a more allegorical kind of work and here's another example of a grand piano that was decorated in Cartier's shop and you see again a kind of an allegorical figure on the inside of the lid of the piano. In conclusion as a supplier of art appropriate to the environment of the aesthetic home Cartier focused on landscape and to a lesser extent on static figure paintings that were subdued in color broadly painted and lacking in narrative content for the most part the art he sold has fallen out of fashion the tonal paintings that he favored lost their appeal with the rise and popularization of impressionism and with the exception of some painters such as Corot and to a lesser extent Dobin Yi they have not become fashionable again but in his time there was a strong market for it particularly among middle class collectors who wanted good art for their home that were not building private galleries with the intention of opening them to the public or bequeating them to a major museum after their deaths their taste was summed up well by the Edinburgh art collector Robert Hamilton Bruce a friend and client of Cartier who wrote quote a great picture never violently asserts itself and in a carefully selected collection repose is one of the most striking features and quote thank you very much and I hand it over now to Andrea thank you so much Petra and thank you to the Paul Mellon Center for organizing this event today reflecting back on his career and the work that he felt best fulfilled his aims as an artist Edward Byrne Jones often singled out his design for the mosaic the Tree of Life the composition formed part of his expansive mosaic cycle for the American Episcopal Church of St. Paul's within the Wall's Rome executed between 1881 and 1894 created for the second chancel arch the Tree of Life is the visual and conceptual core of the mosaic program in addition to his typical working drawings Byrne Jones created this colossal and highly detailed cartoon in watercolor and gouache heightened with gold at one ninth scale he exhibited this mammoth study as part of his retrospective at the new gallery in 1892 and later displayed the watercolor prominently in the Hall of the London home where it remained until his death Byrne Jones regretted that the Tree of Life had not received the same recognition as his oil paintings lamenting to his studio assistant Thomas Rook quote there was that design of the Christ the man and woman with the fruits of the earth no one even looked at it when it was shown in the new gallery they only saw that it wasn't oil painted and yet it said as much as anything I have ever done a cogent and kinetic decorative design the Tree of Life merges the fall the crucifixion and the apocalyptic return to paradise found in the book of Revelation forging an innovative and radical iconography of Christian salvation Christ occupies the center of the design wearing a crown of thorns and with arms extended in the pose of the cross however this Christ is not the man of sorrows nor is he crucified his body is free from any sign of trauma or suffering the palms upturned and the head slightly bowed in a gesture of blessing and forgiveness Christ is flanked not by Saint John and Mary but by the figures of Adam and Eve with their infant children Cain and Abel Byrne Jones is designed for the Tree of Life developed concurrently with his revival of the iconography of the labors of Adam and Eve most notably as seen in this frontispiece for William Morris's socialist novel A Dream of John Ball the couple's retemptive toil on the earth remains a potent presence in the mosaic cartoon signified by the golden ripening corn on the left side of the arch beside Adam the white flowering lily of the enunciation appears alongside Eve in the corresponding position on the right entangled with thorns to suggest the pain of childbirth and maternal loss for this new interpretation of traditional Christian iconography Byrne Jones chose to inscribe a quotation from Saint John's Gospel at the base of the arch translated from the Latin it reads quote in the world do you have tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world this promise of mercy was delivered by Christ to his disciples following the Last Supper on the eve of the crucifixion moreover the verse follows a passage in which Christ likens himself to a vine with each of his disciples as branches that will bear fruit this carefully selected inscription sends a forthright message of compassion and hope sustained by the sacred regenerative force of nature the tree of life thus reformulates the central tenets of Christian salvation celebrating not just the redemption of humanity but the concurrent resurgence of all organic life indeed it is the vibrant flourishing tree that animates and defines the composition rendered in lush shades of emerald and azure the tree is further enlivened by flowing bands of gold paint that course through the branches and outline each heart shaped leaf serpentine and rhythmically intertwine bows rise from the base of the design and explode outwards to fill the sky while protectively unfolding each of the human figures the tree possesses an almost corporeal quality the curving limbs resembling a system of veins or bronchi carefully considering the architectural features of the intended space burn jones designed the mosaic to echo the curves of the trefoil arch in the sweeping lines of the composition from the grassy slopes of the terrain to the golden strip of sky to the spiraling structure of the tree the terrestrial and celestial realms are bound together through an assertion of the omnipresence of the sacred in all living things exemplifying Ruskin's tenet for the repair of society there is no wealth but life the tree of life proposes an ecological model of regeneration and prosperity countering the ruinous impact of industrialization on the individual and the environment in the 19th century burn jones's bold vision proposed the noble human body in harmony with the revival of a thriving natural world as the key to achieving redemption in all the commission design and execution of the mosaics for st paul's within the walls occupied burn jones for well over a decade from the first commission for the absolute semi dome in 1881 to the first the final unveiling of the choir and chancel arches in 1894 as a site specific decorative program the roman mosaics allowed burn jones the scope and freedom to create an absorptive embodied and transformative aesthetic experience on a monumental scale moreover this expansive decorative project for a dedicated ecclesiastical interior fulfilled his desire to create immersive spaces of contemplation and devotion that were also publicly accessible and liberated from the art market epitomizing the work that he found to be the most urgent and meaningful when describing his fraught relationship with exhibitions and the privileged status of the commodified painted canvas burn jones pointedly selected the mosaics for st paul's within the walls as exemplifying its ideal mode of artistic practice stating that he wanted to quote fill all the church with lasting unsalable pictures working in the ancient medium of mosaic he embraced the opportunity to leave an enduring artistic legacy that would exist beyond the grasp of capitalist acquisition across the soaring arches and apps of st paul's he unfolded an innovative vision of an ecological apocalypse and redemption alongside the pioneering eco critical philosophy of john ruskin and morris the mosaic cycle of st paul's within the walls serves as burn jones's reciprocal call for environmental regeneration from out of the industrial devastation of the 19th century and yet the mosaics for st paul's within the walls remain comparatively obscure and overlooked within burn jones's larger earth i first encountered the church and burn jones's vast mosaic cycle in the early spring of 2004 i was visiting rome as part of a graduate seminar and a friend knowing my interest in british aestheticism took me to see it during one of our breaks note that it was definitely not part of the itinerary for the course which largely ignored anything after the 18th century nestled among the bustling shops of the via nazionale the church designed by british architect george edmund street stands out as an embodiment of victorian architectural eclecticism variously described as northern italian gothic neo romanesque and Byzantine in style such an anomalous choice of architecture against the backdrop of rome was no doubt a purposeful statement on the part of rector robert jay nevin who desired to render his Protestant independence visually evident and earn quick recognition for his neophyte church one of the first to take advantage of the new policy of religious tolerance under victor immanuel the second once i stepped inside the church the noise of the street outside quieting i was immediately intrigued and captivated by burn jones's sprawling mosaic scheme a fascination which only grew as i realized how little they had been studied or discussed as part of the artist's career and versus that is a more broadly that visit to rome and my encounter with the mosaics was in many ways the origin point for my forthcoming book the radical vision of edward burn jones challenging the dominant characterization of burn jones as an artist who withdrew from the victorian world into imaginary realms of his own creation my book demonstrates that he was instead engaged in a fundamentally radical defiance of the artistic social and political hierarchies of the modern age for burn jones modernity was defined by utilitarianism industrialization imperialism capitalist acquisitive materialism and a pervasive disregard for the sanctity of the natural world and the suffering of collective humanity as a young student at oxford burn jones first began to rebel against these injustices vowing to embark on what he termed his quote crusade and holy warfare against the age the heartless coldness of the times after declaring that he would abandon christian ministry for the secular ministry of art his protest against the age took the form of immersive epiphanic aesthetic experiences adopting the medieval concept of dreams as visionary states of transformation burn jones hoped to reveal the utopian power of embodied aesthetic encounters not as a retreat but as a vehicle for revolutionary awakening dissatisfied with the london art market which privileged the portable easily commodified oil on canvas medium burn jones continually sought to exceed the established parameters of painting either through executing colossal individual works or through expansive multi-work cycles moreover he pursued opportunities not only to resist the established artistic premise supremacy of painting but also to generate site specific immersive environments through the decorative arts although it is often overshadowed by his painting practice burn jones was a prolific designer for the decorative arts including book illustration mosaic stained glass tapestry and ball release sculpture my book re-centers his work in the decorative arts demonstrating that he consistently interrogated the boundaries of artistic media in keeping with wider debates over the role of the arts in the 19th century each chapter investigates the use of different artistic media introducing case studies and his experimentation with book illustration the single monumental canvas the multi-part painted series mosaic specifically the mosaic cycle for st paul's within the walls and finally stained glass tapestry and paintings and dialogue crucial to my argument is a re-examination of burn jones's supposed schism with morris over socialism i posit that their divergence was unequivocally one of methods not beliefs thereby returning their profound artistic and intellectual collaborative partnership to the core of burn jones's career when morris turned to socialist activism burn jones supported his radical ideological stance but disapproved of his impatience and the tendentious factionalism that quickly embroiled his friend for burn jones the petty bickering and bureaucratic haggling of politics was ephemeral unlike the politics of tracks and pamphlets art could endure speaking not only to the present but to the future as well adhering to his calling as a painter and decorative artist rather than a poet in order burn jones expressed his deeply held convictions through the vital language of the visual arts my fourth chapter is solely devoted to burn jones's roman mosaics which i explore as a site specific immersive encounter infused with an eco critical reimagining of the iconography of christian salvation this vast decorative scheme presented burn jones with an opportunity to create a prominent public work in an adamantine medium that could speak not only to his own era but also endure through the ravages of time to inspire future generations harnessing the experiential as well as temporal power of his ancient communal art form burn jones's mosaics were designed as a holistic embodied experience throughout the cycle themes of natural destruction and rebirth emerge as central to the apocalyptic narrative entering off the bustling via nazionale not far from room central train station the visitor slowly adjusts to the hushed cool interior the glittering gold mosaics of the apps emerge from the darkness drawing the viewer down the central isle the quiet arch which partially obscures the tancel arch and much of the upper portion of the absolute semi-dome is the first clearly visible part of the mosaic program as the viewer processes forward in the scene of the annunciation the essential elements are present as a humble marry in white robes bows her haloed head and clasps her hands in prayer on the miraculous arrival of the angel gabriel who descends from the heavens before her however burn jones chose to unfold this holy scene than a barren desert rendering it difficult at first to reconcile with existing iconographic traditions executed largely in matt or opaque mosaic tiles the bleak and air landscape as laid out in pale somber shades of brown green and slate set against a smoldering crepuscular sky of reds and oranges further amplifying incongruity of the scene mary is depicted with the unusual attribute of a water jar as a symbol of the incarnation this empty jar made to note the theological concept of mary as the sacred human vessel who would receive the word of god made flesh in addition burn jones may also have been drawing on an apocryphal legend that told of mary going forth to fill a water jar beyond the gates of nazareth in the lower left corner burn jones also made the unusual iconographical choice to depict as mary's earthly counterpart a mother pelican tearing her breast to sustain her offspring her own blood the pelican was a prevalent medieval christian symbol evoking christ's sacrifice nourishing her young by lacerating her own breast while this notion was biologically inaccurate the pelican became a potent visual emblem of the passion and in particular the blood that flowed from christ's side burn jones featured the pelican and her young and other ecclesiastical designs including in the central lower light of the east window of st martin's church brampton as a maternal figure of christ the pelican aligns mother and child in their nurturing relationship toward humanity as well as their sacrifice for the sake of redemption the presence of the pelican in the annunciation arch mosaic therefore accords with christian typological symbolism prefiguring the appearance of christ himself in the chancel arch the tree of life however the pelican also suggests that the fauna of the earth decline or flourish with the health of the environment standing alongside the self-sacrificing pelican in a scorched desert mary and her water jar promised the hope of regeneration for humanity the earth and all organic life burn jones unveils the broadly resonant elements of the annunciation narrative themes of both human and environmental rebirth of the possibility of a wasteland transforming into verdant field and forest of life flourishing from barrenness of the nurturing mother and mother earth these themes of spring resurging from the bleak days of the earth of human and natural fecundity flourishing in harmony are brought to rivet fruition as the viewer proceeds further down the pavement of the central aisle from the stark but expectant scene of the annunciation to the lush triumph of the tree of life the space once occupied by mary on the right of the annunciation is now filled with the figure of eve at her two children while the angelic gabriel floating on the left side of the arch gives way to the earthly body of adam his feet firmly planted on a grassy slope from out of the empty and barren ground that marked the center of the annunciation now sprouts sprouts the colossal tree of life from which christ makes a gesture of blessing and forgiveness rather than the suffering and center of the crucifixion the salvation and redemption of humanity is envisioned as a tripartite apotheosis of a flourishing natural world the human body enabled through labor and the harmonic rhythms of decorative art array across the chancell arch the tree of life serves as a gateway to the shimmering absolute semi-dome mosaic christ and throned in the heavenly jerusalem within the spatial configuration of the church therefore the tree of life binds together earth and heaven transporting the viewer to paradise alongside adam and eve for his design of christ and throned burn jones remain largely faithful to the Byzantine tradition of placing an enthroned and youthful christ in majesty at the heart of the mosaic in burn jones's rendering christ is ensconced before the golden walls of the heavenly jerusalem while to either side appear five arch angels standing guard at the gates of paradise this apocalyptic vision was also drawn from the book of revelation in which john has shown the radiant walls of heavenly jerusalem ringed with 12 gates and 12 angels choosing to depict one half of a presumably symmetrical configuration burn jones presented the viewer with six gates standing before them appear from left to right uriel guardian of the sun michael the warrior bearing a shield and spear gabriel the angel of the annunciation holding a white lily chemuel bearing the sand grail and finally zoeville garden guardian of the moon the portal on christ right hand remain empty a gaping void at the very center of the apps this forebodingly unguarded gate evokes the legend of lucifer the arch angel who rebelled against god and was cast down through the heavens in burn jones's original plan for the church a mosaic of the fall of lucifer was to fill the entrance wall on the opposite end of the nape unfortunately it was never executed and exists now only as a monumental watercolor while informed by traditional Byzantine iconography insistent environmental visual cues pervade burn jones's design for christ enthroned suggesting that he shifted his apocalyptic vision to encompass the renewal of nature alongside the salvation of the human soul beginning with the enthroned christ and majesty he selected the more obscure attribute of an earthly globe the prominent globe is also strongly reminiscent of those found in his six panel watercolor the days of creation you see a detail here from the second day this ecological orb with its compressed views of meadows mountains and sparkling sky was frequently noted by commentators as a dominant feature of the mosaic for example in 1890 fg stevens called attention to the globe in its detailed landscape writing quote the great and central figure is that of the son of god who holds on his knee with his left hand the great sphere of crystal in which are mystically reflected the earth blue sky and wavy sea full of flecks of light the terrestrial landscape of the prominent spatial and ideological focal point of the apps is a salient visual cue alerting the viewer to a prevailing environmental current that runs throughout the cycle as a whole at the base of christ's heavenly throne the four rivers of paradise flow forth to create what one viewer termed a quote circumambulant flood around the base of the semi dome echoing the scene in the orb above the four streams cascade over a mountainous landscape dotted by passing clouds and enclosed in the arc of a rainbow before emerging to become one gushing river the banks of this river are comprised of vividly colored geological patterns that fill the space above the pale blue waves these interlocking organic shapes which resemble the striated curves of volcanic geodes or slices of marble are also suggested by a passage and revelation whether foundations of heaven are described as adorned with every jewel this innovative depiction of a sea of jewels is also a self-referential decorative gesture for the myriad glass and stone tiles that comprise the geological mosaic medium itself lastly as viewers gaze back up the curve of the apps and around from left to right they are met on either side with the celestial figures of uriel and zoophile the guardians of the sun and moon personifications of day and night the orbiting solar and lunar celestial bodies reinforce the cyclical progression of life on earth a perpetual rise and fall that promises a new dawn after the dark of night returning to burn jones's decision to include an empty portal alongside christ this may have been an illusion to the medieval concept of the tenth choir a space once occupied by lucifer and his rebel angels to which redeemed humankind might be elevated at the end of time together with the planned entrance while mosaic the empty portal and the apps beside christ therefore would have created another movement of cyclical rise and fall across the nave of the church the banishment of lucifer and his angels on the entrance wall would have ushered the viewer toward the desolation of the enunciation the verdant rebirth of the tree of life and at last to the heavenly jerusalem where christ and humanity are reconciled in this enduring medium and a site specific location which could feasibly survive long after its sponsoring civilization crumbled around it burn jones and feral division of an ecological apocalypse transcending temporal limitations to speak across the ages offering hope for the renewal and redemption of the earth to future generations thank you right well what we really need at the moment is a huge round of applause and i'm going to hope that that little smattering of applause will do for that for the moment um but it was um thank you all three for a wonderful introduction to your books but also um and inspiring images um and we would if we were all all here we would give you a huge round of applause now i um would encourage people please to enter your questions into the q and a we've got a couple of good questions to get already there but um i'm going to give people a little bit of a chance to get their thoughts collected and please put in questions to the q and a any question is great um even if it seems to come from left field or to be on something um strange or weird we we're we're keen to have any questions and we have a little less than half an hour perhaps to um to answer questions but let me just get some some the question session started off perhaps a little bit by by raising raising uh the issue what is probably the issue of the evening which is about decorative art Petra and Max in their introduction have a wonderful quotation from Ruskin who's a figure who's of relevance to um to both of these books i think and um and both the both of the the people that are involved Ruskin writes the only essential distinction between decorative and other art is the being fitted for a fixed place and all the greatest art which the world has produced is thus fitted for a place there is no existing highest order art but is decorative and he goes on to mention the Parthenon and the Sistine ceiling and Raphael stands in the Vatican so his i love his phrase he's turning things around decorative and other art well of course other art is all of the the the the fine art that is so often the focus of our art historical explorations and that has the highest status in our worlds and you've all been very brave therefore in looking at the other art um i also like that phrase in the book uh the subtitle of the book by Lewis Foreman Day the art's not fine um but i just want i thought perhaps we could start off by asking all three of you perhaps to comment on what some of the challenges are about writing about the other art not the art that we generally see in um in magisterial art historical interpretations and books and also not that sort of flat art within um a nice rectangular frame that's easy to reproduce on the pages of a book so it all looks um you know sort of as if it fits in the in the book format and i wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how how that um how that was a a challenge to you or in in making your own books writing and and thinking about how your own books would work and um and maybe a little bit uh how you overcame those challenges so um i see Andrea's nodding um so perhaps let's start with Andrea and then we'll go um we'll so we'll go backwards and we'll go to Petra and Matt max oh great um i mean i had a lot of thoughts from that um you know there are these advantages and disadvantages to the site specific works and you know burn jones really wanted to have that immersive interior that he could kind of you know control all those parts together and really make something kind of embodied but then that makes it difficult now um you know where that the church of st paul's in the wall that is kind of you know remote it is um you know often ignored it surrounded by like shoe stores and things like that um and even just as we were talking before the event started just getting photographs of it was was really a challenge um that you know conveyed it as you experience it so i tried to kind of pair the images that i had of it um to you know narrating what the experience is kind of like as you move through the space so i think it was really important um especially to someone like burn jones to have that complete holistic interior but then in reading through you know max and petra's book i was really struck by um the last one the last images in the book is of a stained glass window that used to be in cleveland right and that interior has subsequently been destroyed um and that is really the kind of you know one of the huge disadvantages of those full interiors how difficult it is for them to survive especially if they were for private homes well um i i mentioned earlier a little talk a little bit about stained glass and i think stained glass is kind of very important particularly the domestic stained glass because um is it decorative art or is it fine art and you know the difference i i mentioned how it's it's kind of strange to see that the decorative art is that the actual art that was hung in the aesthetic home that that that cardiovascular delta and these these tonal landscapes is so different from the stained glass windows were which were in the very same homes you know and which showed allegorical figures of spring and and with you know with colorful dresses spring and winter and summer and then you have these very dark landscapes so i think that um yeah at the time there was really this idea that that the value of everything is in its decorative role within the house or within the church or within the environment and we didn't even mention for example the fact that ike about williams who was a major you know a patron of codio in new york not only bought paintings from codio not only had his furniture designed by codio not only had probably stained glass windows by codio although we don't know but he also bought his portion chinese porcelain collection from codio because codio also had a huge um uh you know supply of chinese porcelains and if you were you know unfortunately we have no no archives so we have no records but i'm sure that if you looked at the prizes of all these objects they wouldn't be substantially different so a painting by doping you might have been the same prize as a chinese vase not that money is essential but i mean i think it gives you an idea that it was it was all part of um of of what and we call this immersive environment and and everything had its role in there and everything also had equal value yeah i love that phrase immersive which is it seems like you know today's phrase but it worked really well max did you have something to say yeah i mean i think speaking actually as a former art dealer it does interest me that the difference in values between something that's painted on a canvas or is painted on on a ceramic black or or or a piece of glass and and you you can get a very good piece of painting on a ceramic black or or a stained glass window for a tiny fraction of what the equivalent on canvas would cost but but max that is now was that true then i think i think there's still yeah i think i think that differential did exist yeah i think it did and has only gotten more perhaps i'm just i'm trying to think of examples but you know if you if you compare a burn jones painting i'm sure that the stained glass panel would be about very valuable but would not be the the sort of hundreds of thousands that the that the painting would but anyway that that was that that still surprises me but but actually now you mentioned it petra i think no that that that difference has gotten bigger because what i was then going to say was that what really interests me is this idea of the uh obviously it's a tenet of aesthetic movement is this uh breaking down of those barriers as you hint at in the russian quotation and that is just absolutely obviously crucial to to the movement and um i find that you know it's kind of interesting um the terminology that gets used you know culture they make a great point of calling him an artist in glass for example so you know he's not a designer there's this difference between an artist and a designer and christopher dresser also coincidentally born in Glasgow around the same time goes you know writes a lot about this um you know the fact that he's an industrial what we would call an industrial designer um he goes on and on about the fact that he's not given he never got figure he never was trained in figure drawing so he doesn't have that fine art background and he's a little nift his parents sent him to the government school of design where he became an industrial designer but there's this this this idea that um that they were sort of um separate things and obviously there was a social element to this as well difference trades and professions and what have you but um i i think the the crucial thing i'm going it really goes back to set in a sense uh bern jones because um he was obviously part of uh morris marshal folker and company and that was the groundbreaking thing really in this generation of of uh the the fine artists working for the decade of arts and courtier's firm in a sense is a is one of the many which um just sort of takes that as the model really so um i think it's um i think it's you know something that was a really obviously a burning issue at the time and it's still uh you know an important uh aspect to debate now and and see and i was just going to another thing was that william leaper who was the architecture design the church i showed at the beginning the don hill church um he describes himself as an art architect so you know there's this idea that um that he was an artist um producing art um rather than just an architect yeah that's really interesting i think and um there's there's a lot more there that we could we could go into about those distinctions and you know in both of your you you have um artists or um designers who are who are really um interestingly sort of breaking down some of the traditional boundaries between those um those kinds of of work um now i've got lots of questions building up and i'm going to ask a couple of questions to begin with um there are some questions that are sort of rather specific to um to one or one or two of your books but i one or the other of your books but i would um i'll just um start with a couple that um that do bring together some of the ideas and first there's one from morna o'neill um who says she's wondering if you could say a little bit more about the internationalism of the aesthetic encounters that you've discussed both in a transatlantic sense in the work of kottier and of rome as the site of burn jones's work and she's struck by the practical concerns things about you know how you transport stained glass for example as well as the more philosophical concerns did burn jones worried all about the relation of his design to catholic decorative schemes in the city um and morna also observes that this this is this this sort of um interest in how things um work internationally or across that that kind of border is is very much a question of today as well so i um i wonder whether any of you have something to say in response to that question well we have looked at some photographs of interiors particularly the philips house and max and i have been trying to kind of analyze the different things that were in the house and it is absolutely amazing if you start doing that the combination of objects from all over the world of different time periods so these these rooms were kind of little microcosms really uh with chinese vases with with um you know islamic uh screens so uh we know also that kottier and max can say more about it traveled all over the world to uh to source stuff he went to egypt he went to you know he traveled all over europe even though his health was bad that was kind of essential for him to kind of get a stock for his for his store and yeah if we could just pick on that up on that last point yes that's true uh he was um he was died at the age of 53 um of um uh was it heart trouble but he was it rheumatoid rheumatic rheumatic fever thank you so anyway uh yeah so part of his travels were to sort of recuperate various spas and things and then the the warmer climate in uh in chiral um but that also meant he was um like you say able to source uh uh objects um i think the the practical side of things um is something we didn't look at in detail but uh yeah i mean as i hinted at in my talk you know just the logistics and cost of of exporting objects was very expensive so it wasn't done unless you had to the the glass was sent from england to the states and on some occasions we think to australia but but um in in fact and in fact the furniture and the other interiors were were specific to to the uh to the uh local um businesses in in in new york and in australia but i think um they obviously follow a sort of in a sense of tried and tested route um in the 1860s 70s a lot of firms were opening up um british firms and french and german of course were opening up businesses in in the states weren't they and Morrison company also has they only have agents in new york and boston and probably other cities um so there was a cache to to british design at this point i think it's fair to say um and it had added an extra value to things which was just as well because they were expensive to import um and australia obviously having having that strong connection with britain would would be the other an obvious place to start up a partnership um to i guess um but uh the the um you know the given given the length of time they took to travel um it is quite astonishing the fact that Kossier was able to shuffle between the the the uk and the us and and the cons and continental europe and then also make a couple of trips to australia while he was at it um it's with his family often in total um it's kind of amazing um and uh it's part of that part of the story and and the fact that workmen as i said too were going between these um the nations and and freddie vincent harp one of his faithful designers for decades uh actually emigrates to the states and then and then start what does decoration there so in in america so it is a truly international story indeed yeah thanks so much for that question morna um you know it doesn't seem that bern jones was quite as well traveled as kottier um he took three trips to italy and he went to france as well um you know but it is interesting having this you know american church in rome choosing a british artist but um you know max as you said that kind of cachet was building especially over the 1880s for for british artists like um bern jones and interestingly enough as far as the kind of practical considerations go the mosaics posed a huge problem because it was not a medium that morris typically worked in and um they had a lot of issues trying to you know morris helped bern jones um try to translate his cartoons there was all these letters back and forth in which bern jones is saying like no no no they're doing it totally wrong like you have to do it this way so they kind of would piece together the mosaics they numbered them all then sent this kind of numbering system off eventually they got it down but it was like this really difficult back and forth and then interestingly bern jones actually never went to italy to see it after it was completed um you know so it always kind of existed for him just kind of like in his mind as far as what that experience is like within the church itself and um you know philosophically speaking he was aware you know of other especially kind of Byzantine mosaic interiors in um rome in venice and revena that he studied um back in the 1870s and he was drawing on this precedent so there's really a clear dialogue between what he's depicting there and these other churches that could be visible around um in italy but i also think like on this kind of larger scope that this international scale is really interesting especially where these decorative arts um commissions do survive like the stained glass that bern jones and morris you know created for morris and co all over the world right you can still find these examples and they survive in situ and so it's almost like these little you know um outlets of aestheticism around the world we can think about in an imperial context that's maybe having some negative connotations but also i think some positive ones as well yeah great um there's a there's a question from chris mcgeorge about the difference in audiences perhaps for a um uh say a work of stained glass in a domestic interior and something um in a church is work of stained glass or a mosaic and um um chris is asking to what extent is there a monolithic sense of craft versus fine art in those two different kinds of environment or whether um the fact that these artists are working across domestic spaces and um religious spaces um starts to break that down any thoughts on that question sorry arnude uh yeah i that was that was something which interested me um because what uh happens uh in in the 18 i would say in the 1870s is that uh there's a sort of in some aesthetic um the artworks stained glass there's a sort of uh a they become less secure they sorry they become less religious they there's a secularization of some of the imagery um and um this is there may be you know particular reasons for this within different religious denominations but i always get i sort of get the sense that that there's a slightly freer uh attitude and uh to religion in the sense that uh you will get more sort of beautiful angels and lush landscapes in the windows and there's more of a sort of poetry to to my mind and uh sort of softening of of of imagery uh in the glass and i think even just the sort of anecdotal windows like the parables being popular there's something in that too um and also just the the the the way in which um portraits are lobbed in sometimes which is kind of a bit risky but i showed it with kottir being christ but there's this sort of definite breaking down of bars in the northeast windows which are famously portraits of the deceased barefoot with with halos in the garden of heaven um you know it's pretty extraordinary to you know put your wife and your daughter in in that sort of depiction so there's definitely some breakdown sorry a break yeah again sort of breakdown i think between the secular and the religious which you see in the glass um so i think it is it is being being treated quite our quite um as as as something to advance in terms of iconography which you probably uh you obviously see in in in the church in in rome with the mosaics as well at the same time however i think that uh you know there was a very strong sense that there were different types of environment the domestic environments being private being more focused on interiority and then the church being more public or you also have the large public buildings and the uh you know the subject matter of course is very different right you have the large armorial windows for the town halls and you have the religious subjects for the churches and then you have you know these kind of more intimate subjects for the home so i mean there was a there was a great awareness that while all of these were immersive spaces again to use andria's um uh that that they had different purposes and and where and and uh you know and the people in there had a different relationship to these interiors yeah i really had to to think through you know whether or not an ecclesiastical space is a public space or and i think really for burn jones it was right it is the space that is ostensibly accessible to anyone that it stays put he had these kind of private commissions but the downside of you know designing you know a set of tapestries for the oil baron william knock star c you know i mean that had a lot of drawbacks to it and that it's not available to just anyone that you know it could be destroyed um you know the interiors private domestic interiors change very frequently um so i really think that there is that you know desire for these public spaces and that often the ecclesiastical context was one that was available um and so you know working within that kind of visual language but to express something that you know to burn jones's view was perhaps more universal yeah although um as um as max kept using the word sumptuousness i think to to to describe those interiors some of those um the very um ambitious later later interiors and that domestic interiors are on that kind of scale and with that kind of ambition to to um to to sort of um and of course might indeed be used more as quasi public spaces in their in their um worlds um we we have a few questions that are more specific to one or the other of our um talks and um and um there are quite a lot of very specific questions about um kottier but i think uh let me just start with um one about burn jones because i think that might um bring some things together and in fact i'm going to put it together and put um there's a question from victoria hepburn who's talking about um the problems actually of of uh conveying to other people um the the um the the site specific words which of course everybody can't visit and she asks whether burn jones made any use of photography um to to demonstrate the interior of um some polls within the walls and i'm just going to add on to that um a question we had from sarah victoria turner about um the issues that you may have had um in um in using photography in order to to um illustrate your points whether you needed to commission photography in other words so it um you as authors actually try to disseminate these site specific interiors to the audiences of today so maybe andrea first and the and and um patrin max can chime in if they like to great thanks so much victoria i mean actually he he didn't use photography for the mosaics and most of you know his use of photography came through um hollier and the photographing of certain um certain works watercolors paintings um that were circulated um but not the mosaics he did display a lot of the cartoons for the mosaics in his house so we have surviving photography of you know different the tree of life cartoons other cartoons were kind of around and when he people would come to visit him he made a point of kind of stopping and talking about them there's this really touching anecdote about the actually the morning before he died was like the last thing he showed so it was this young female artist who came um to his house and he talked to her about the tree of life mosaic but he didn't actually have photographs commissioned of the mosaic institute to then circulate um he did make a little model but that wasn't publicly available and yes as far as kind of personal um struggles with photography i don't know if sarah knows this but this the very last photographs to come in for the book were from um saint paul's within the walls and a wonderful photographer based in rome amarizio botolotto um helped me uh with that um you know but i tried a number of times on my own to take photographs and they just come out right because it is so difficult you really have to experience it and that is one of the kind of real advantages but also limitations of conveying that um but thanks for that well i have one little anecdote that's kind of interesting uh you know some of qatya's churches for which he made windows in the united states uh are no longer used by the same congregation so there's a church in st louis uh in missouri that was actually the church of t s elliott's grandfather a unitarian church but that church burned down and then there the windows were saved and they were put in another church and that other church is now the salt baptist church and it has a very small and very poor congregation and during covid trying to get a picture of a window of the windows in that church uh was no easy matter and but finally one of the women who was a member of the church and who was a little bit better at photography she went through great lengths of taking the picture for me and uh but yeah it it wasn't always easy yeah i'm just going to add quickly um qatya and company used photography in england uh to to promote their work so they actually found some photographs of designs um which which they took and also finished windows um sometimes in situ like the one of his own memorial window so they kind of used them and i think they also used to photograph their designs and send them to the clients so that they could see you know approve them um that's how he actually found the northeistic design which which um uh of those windows um but the designs photographs of designs at vanguard could seem when when he visited qatya studio um but but then yes um you know we were doing that we were um had six months uh that we were doing the book was sort of in they're sort of lockdowns so there were all sorts of various disasters um including the the interior of will uh forb's white house which i had arranged with the elderly owners um and then um the the it was an avidine and a week before the avidine football club went out on the town and avidine went out on a special a special lockdown so that that's why there are no pictures of seat and cottage in the book which was a bit of a disappointment um but i'm not sporting avidine obviously now um but um uh we had a we had a very good photographer called colin mclean who was just great atmospheric shots and he went around and the flip side was that um a couple of hotels were closed because of the lockdown so it meant that they were more than happy to um it was bad for business but they were more than happy to let colin in and take photographs because there were no guests around so we sometimes we got lucky but that was very specific to lockdown i think well maybe we'll have to have a sequel when we can we can illustrate some of the things that prove difficult on this occasion now we we're a bit past our official ending time but i think we could we could spend another three or four minutes if people are okay we do we don't we want to give you all a break um pretty soon but what i think i'll do is summarize a few of the additional questions on more specific points and if you can maybe just listen to them and think about which ones you you might might have a have an answer to and i just that just to say there's there's one more on bern jones which is um say how interesting it is that bern jones depicted some of the visions from the book of revelation and notes that the the greek word um for apocalypse um um delote some kind of uncover your disclosure so that seems relevant to what bern jones is to how bern jones is um is expressing himself visually as well as as as to the um to the to the subject matter of um revelation uh so that that's maybe more of an observation than than an actual question we do have however quite a quite a list of rather specific questions about works by cottier so i'm just a cottier i must learn to say um and um and uh i'll just um i'll i'll i'll rattle some of them off and give you a chance to answer whichever ones you think are um irrelevant uh barbara steward asks is there any cottier work in birmingham uh peter trippy makes the interesting observation that that petra has distinguished between a sort of storytelling kind of imagery in the the windows designed by cottier um and the visual simplicity of the paintings that he sold as a dealer and asks whether we know what kind of what kind of art he was collecting himself which did he like better the storytelling sort i think or the the the visual simplicity sort um then um jane cohen asks whether cottier carried out any interior design project for mrs hoice h a w e i s um the the the author of the many of the important design manuals interior decoration books in the in the later 19th century and jackleen wedd asks whether you know of a memorial stained glass window in her local church st oswald's at ravenstone dale in cumbria which is signed d cottier it's a memorial window to mary blanche huitson who was a talented amateur musician and the window depicts st cecilia um and they uh the the family had a furniture business apparently in in tottenham court road um and um and so um just just wonder whether whether that whether that came across your radar screen and i pick up on a couple of those please um just to say i don't know of anything at birmingham but it wouldn't surprise me um there was a there was a window that cottier made for mrs hoice um which she wrote to her mother about complaining that cottier had only made it for her to her design incidentally um as a christmas present because he wanted her to give uh him a good write-up to puff up his manufacturing i think was the quote quotation from that letter but for all for all i know interior decoration too uh would would because it would have been a a bribe as well and then um i did know i had seen picture of the the um the last mentioned window which is a late one i think um and it's fascinating but i did not i hadn't worked out that connection with tottenham court road so i'm really very interested in that but i had seen it uh an image of it somewhere um and so i was aware of it but thank you so much for uh bringing it up yeah and maybe a little bit about cottier's private collection uh his private collection and his you know and and the works the artworks that he dealt with were completely mixed up in a way you know although i think that he knew what he wanted to keep although he might have sold it if the price was right but uh i don't think that there was really a difference and so even the private paintings that he owned were hanging in his gallery and uh what exactly he did then he's maybe he said it's not for sale or maybe he's maybe he asked an exorbitant price for it so that people wouldn't buy it but i don't think that was really a substantial difference between his private collection and the work that he sold in his gallery in in in nature so to speak yeah so that's interesting too because that that um suggests that you know we have an artist collector dealer designer who's um really involved in the um in the the objects and that and the um the furnishings of the interiors that he's um he's dealing with great exactly okay well um we're i think we're nearing now um or we've just got a little past 10 past so perhaps it's time to wrap things up but i will um just repeat what danny has said in the chat which is if there's anybody who has a question the answer to which our superb panelists haven't had the chance to give or they want to elaborate it on or whatever um please do feel free to write to events at paulmelloncenter.ac.uk and all questions will be passed on and everybody will attempt to wrangle with any question that comes up so please do um yes um please do feel free to keep your questions coming there's now another question about where the recording will be posted and i'll leave that to my uh melloncenter colleagues to answer an answer to where where will it be so we will be sorry go ahead you're on the events page if you go to the events page to the on the past recordings that's where you'd be able to find all the recordings for um for this one and everything in the series so thank you okay and i think we need to give it a maybe a week or two um to to make the recording have really good subtitles and so forth so that's yes captions that's what they're called thank you great so i think it really just remains for me to say an enormous thank you to our three wonderful speakers um and uh everybody's going to be dying to see these books now and um and we um and to spread them around the world because in just the fashion let kottier and bern jones's works of art have uh periated all over the world so these books will need to do um and once again we need a really good round of applause which thanks for doing a wonderful job sharing thank you thank you thank you thanks to all of you and thanks to Liz as well for sharing the session thanks again all right we'll say bye study yeah all right see you all and thank you so much for your contributions thank you for doing such a great job this evening thank you it was all you but bye bye nice to meet you bye