This exhibition highlights about ten decorative lamps acquired by the Zimmerli Art Museum as part of a bequest from Sigmund Freedman. The Zimmerli had received earlier several related items by donation from Mr. Freedman, some of which had been displayed in the Zimmerli’s Japonisme gallery. Primarily representing the great period of innovative design and manufacture in the decorative arts from 1880 to 1920, the full collection contains lamps, vases, inkwells, and other items in glass and ceramic, and in chronology and style parallels and enhances the Zimmerli’s important holdings of European and American art from that era.
Impelled by a quest for integrity in the making of decorative arts, late 19th-century artists such as Louis Comfort Tiffany in the United States and Emile Gallé in France associated themselves with a historical revival that urged a return to fine design and production, going back as far as the reaction against the poor craftsmanship and mass production of the Industrial Revolution seen in the English Reform Movement. Much of the Freedman collection reflects the style of Art Nouveau, which emphasized curvilinear and sinuous contours and forms, vivid color, and preference for motifs drawn from nature. Art Nouveau combined aspects of Orientalism, especially those derived from East Asian aesthetic cultures such as those of Japan and China, with the semi-abstract handling of color and imagery of early modernist tendencies.
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