 Hello everyone, and welcome to today's Barnes Takeout, your daily serving of art from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I'm Bill Perthes, the Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education, and some of the things that make the Barnes, the collection of the Barnes Foundation extraordinary extend beyond the remarkable collection of predominantly post-impressionist paintings that Dr. Barnes collected, but also the integration of often unexpected objects, things generally considered the decorative arts, and perhaps top among those in terms of unusual qualities is what's Barnes's decision to include pieces of metalwork, predominantly wrought iron, juxtapose amongst the paintings, something that many people confuse many people because it's so unexpected. Today, I'm going to take a moment to think about the metalwork and focus on one piece in particular. Just to put the inclusion of the metalwork in the development of the collection itself, I want to remind you of a few dates that the foundation was chartered in 1922 as an educational institution. It opened in 1925, but it wasn't for 11 years before Barnes sort of got the bug to start collecting and incorporating pieces of metalwork into what he called his ensembles, the unusual arrangement of the collection. So in 1936, Dr. Barnes wrote a letter to Kenneth Clark, who was the director of the National Gallery in London, where he states, quote, I believe I'm on my way to show in such a fashion that every sensitive person can see that there is essential aesthetic difference between the forms of the great painters or sculptors and those of the iron workers of several hundred years ago who made such commonplace objects as hinges, door handles, locks, et cetera, to make the job complete on route to Paris to get some more early French pieces of hardware and, if possible, get some English pieces too. So it was in 1936 that Dr. Barnes first started to incorporate metalwork, predominantly wrought iron pieces into the ensembles. So many of the objects that we have are commonplace hinges or poles or plate discussions, lock plate discussions, but the piece I'd like to focus on today is a truly exceptional piece in the collection. And we see it here second to the top in gallery six, we're facing south, and a bit of a personal note when I brought my young children to the collection, my son, who was less than seven, immediately was attracted to this piece and asked what sort of lock would that key be used for. And this is the object that drew his attention and not surprisingly, so just to put it back in context, it's this piece here and here's the piece itself. So it's a very large, a very large key for sure, but it wasn't intended to be used as a key per se, but instead was a sign that would have hung outside a locksmith's. It's French, it's from the 18th or early 19th century, and the intention, there are several intentions for the locksmith to hang this out front, first of all to signal his trade, but also to demonstrate the skill, his craftsmanship by the very ornate quality and intricacy of this object. Now it would have hung vertically, although in the ensemble, Dr. Barnes hangs it horizontally and you'll see at the tip this round opening, and that's where it would have been suspended from a bracket out front of the locksmith shop. This is an object that is invested with aesthetic qualities, qualities that were intended to make it a visually exciting piece to look at, so beyond practical purposes, but really invested with creative or artistic qualities. Some of which likely would have had some symbolic connotations. We don't know who made this, works like this were not regularly signed, and even the dating, as I said, it's from the 18th to early 19th century is challenging, somewhat challenging to determine because the material itself doesn't really show the age, we can't date it per se, and styles were often replicated, or even in later years when old pieces were repaired because of wear or damage, craftsmen were able to replicate those earlier forms, often to the degree that it was almost impossible to tell what was more modern or a repair to what was the original. That said, there are certainly some remarkable aspects to this object. At the key end, we see this box, this would have been hollow, and it's decorated is hollow, and it's decorated with this floral design, which is a quadrofoil, so four leaves, and this is a symbol that goes back in time, think of it as the four leaf clover, and its intention is as a sign of good luck. The shaft of the key replicates rods that have been bound together, and I suspect that's what this top is, this is the curled end of those rods, and the collars suggest the binding that holds them together as we move up. Here we see really some of the truly extraordinary qualities of this sign. We have these leaf designs, so these would have been made out of likely sheets of metal that were shaped on an anvil, and it's something that we see in smaller objects, we see them on gates or on grills, and in a smaller piece, sometimes they could have been formed out of a mold, but given the size of these, they likely would have been done by hand, and the variation on them, you see how these openings, for instance, are different on each side, just slight difference, and that suggests the hand wrought nature of it. I should also say that these leaf motifs, again, are an ancient one, it's one that resonates with the palmet motif that we see in ancient Egypt, for instance, so it's one that very much resonates through time. In the French tradition, the leaf design is one that changes in its level of ornateness depending on the period, and here we're talking about Louis XIII, XIV in those periods. In the center between these leaf motifs, we have these three interlocking circles, they might reference the Christian trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, although more often than not, those three are directly interwoven, so the third would actually have been down here, so it may just have been a choice to include three interlocking circles, and then within that we have these sea curls or scrolls, and you'll see that there's an abundance of those, both in the back, just tucked in beneath and behind the leaf motif, and then varying from the center to the edges, and then a flourish of them on the outside. We zoom in a little closer, we can get a sense of the piece's construction, so for instance, if we look up underneath, because we can look underneath these leaf motifs, we can see that these pieces are open, so they're not solid, and as I mentioned, the scrolls are tucked in underneath that. If we look down here, we can see the tips of each of the leaf pieces that have either been welded together, there might be a bolt that holds them together, that this collar hides, or it could be that the piece is held together by the collar itself, and you'll notice that each of these scroll pieces is a separate piece, even though they look like, and this was certainly the craftsman's intention that they seem to arise out of a single piece, and as we move up, we can see, for instance here where this rod pierces underneath this knob, so that's a bolt that would have held, that holds the pieces together. We get the illusion that these are interlocked, which they probably are are likely welded together, which gives them a lightness, but if we look just underneath, there's another bolt holding these separate pieces together, and if we go to the top, we get the echo of what we saw down below, and again notice the tips here where these pieces join each other, so it's quite an ornate piece, and it's certainly a piece of metalwork that stands out in the collection, both because of its scale as well as because of its delicate yet delicate and ornate quality, so it's an interesting combination of something that's large in scale, but that has a delicate decorative, almost filigree quality to it in the abundance of scroll work. Now if we put it back into the context of the ensemble, we might ask the question why this piece in this ensemble or on this ensemble, and I suspect there's a couple reasons. The one I'll point out for us today is how it relates to the objects that are on the extreme of this ensemble, on the extreme right and extreme left. Here we have two American 18th century Windsor chairs, and you'll notice that these Windsor chairs are of considerable scale, they're quite large, and we have a pair of them on either side. Over top of them are paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir from around 1917 to Seated Nudes, and I think the Renoirs give us a bit of a clue that Renoir has chosen to paint these large scale nudes, but that the picture itself is very delicate and decorative, so it's a combination of perhaps unexpected qualities, things that are large but have a light delicate decorativeness to it. So if we go back to the full ensemble, we see how we have a mirror of that on or an echo of that on the other side, and then finally if we look at this Pennsylvania German chest, again a common kind of object in the collection, 18th century as you can see by the date on it, it itself again is a large solid sort of massive chest, chest over drawers, but that it has been decorated or was decorated with these undulating vertical lines that give it a decorative delicacy, so again resonating with the qualities both of our locksmith sign, as well as the Renoirs and the American Windsor chairs on either extreme. So I hope that the next time you visit the collection or if you visited online, take some time to look at the metalwork, the ironwork in the collection. As I said, some of the pieces are very common and simple, but we do have some really surprising examples of wrought iron. So again I hope you'll look for those in the collection, and I want to thank you for tuning in to today's edition of Barn's Takeout. Do subscribe, leave comments below, we enjoy hearing your reflections and additions to our observations, and join us again for the next edition of Barn's Takeout. Take care. I'm Tom Collins, New Bauer Family Executive Director of the Barns Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barn's Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barns Foundation.