Sculpture is at the heart of Victorian visual and material culture in a number of ways, crossing and challenging the boundaries between craft and manufacture, as well as the figurative and the decorative, and appearing on any number of more or less functional objects. In this module, we consider the previously neglected centrality of sculpture to the design reform agenda, considering the ways in which sculptural production was industrialised and democratically diffused throughout Victorian culture, and the ways in which sculptures responded to the challenge of new industrial technologies and materials, as well as sought to challenge the industrialization of sculpture through a revival of a host of historical craft processes. Seeking to challenge the dominance of free-standing full size figurative marbles and bronzes in the extant scholarship, in favour of a focus on sculptural objects of various kinds in the decorative and applied arts, the module also seeks to challenge the notion that the industrialization of sculpture in nineteenth-century Britain led to a deterioration in quality or creativity. The module will explore a range of media, potentially ranging from iron through zinc to leather and silver, as well as wood, glass, parian and other ceramic forms, and precious and semi-precious metals and stones. Given the paucity of scholarship on this area, the module will be self-consciously object-focused, and will proceed through a series of unprecedently close readings of individual objects and groups of related objects. The module should enable the development of a range of materially-focussed and materially-diverse skills, across a broad range of genres, that might help applicants in developing a portfolio of skills with both art and design institutions in mind, and the curation of historic domestic and other interiors.
By the end of the module, students should have acquired:
Possible seminar outline:
Module information
- Module title
Sculpture, Craft and Design Reform, 1837-1901- Module number
HOA00066M- Convenor
Jason Edwards
For postgraduates