Monday, January 13, 2014

Modern Print Monday: Edward William Godwin



Ely by Edward Wm. Godwin
1873
Godwin designed woven fabrics and wallpaper inspired by
Japanese crests---the imagery and their characteristic formal and informal repeats.

Edward William Godwin
1833-1886

Architect  E.W. Godwin was one of the first British designers to adapt traditional Japanese culture, a style that became known as Japonisme, a French word for the study or influence of Japanese arts. Critic Max Beerbohm called him "the greatest aesthete of them all."


Japanese arts and crafts were exhibited for the first time in the west at the London International Exposition in the early 1860s.

Godwin Sunflower Wallpaper
1872

Godwin's Art Furniture catalog was published in 1877


Godwin's "Anglo-Japanese" furniture with it's fragile lines was quite a contrast to the era's Gothic Revival taste. It was often ebonized mahogany (brown wood painted black.)

The Art Furniture Company's furniture and textiles were shown in the United States at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia where actual Japanese arts were also shown, creating a taste for Japonisme in the U.S.

Tea on the American prairie, about 1910.

Traditional Japanese-style patchwork print

All of which led somehow to the Crazy Quilt
and this piece of American printed cotton
imitating a Crazy Quilt.

The Victoria and Albert Museum
has the most comprehensive collection of
Godwin's design. You can buy Christmas cards
with his prints.

Do a search of their collection, which includes his sketchbook:

Click here to see a small index to Godwin's textiles:


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