Preamble
This blogspot has a number of posts on felt and felted objects which have been listed below for your convenience.
Hallstatt Textiles
Nuno Felted Scarves@Felted Pleasure
Fabric Construction - Felt
Felted Garments
Felted Accessories
Felted Works of the 1980s
Felt Shawls
Felt Objects - Part I
Felt Objects - Part II
Felt Objects - Part III
Felt Objects - Part III [1]
Without a doubt, crafters are stretching the boundaries of the felt making discipline. Taking advantage of wool's natural tendency to shrink and entangle, many artists actually use felt through a variety of fabrics, including silk, gauze, lace, and velvet, to completely change the look and feel of the material and create a wide variety of surface textures. In this series of blog posts you'll find pieces that synthesize a range of materials to provide a sensational effect and so give the felt objects an added artistic dimension.
Designer: Yohji Yamamoto.
Description: Stylized Sculpture 001 (2007).
Material: Felt.
Size: Dimension not available.
Photograph: Courtesy of Sugimoto Studio.
Reference: Kyoto Costume institute.
Designer: Waltraud Reiner.
Description: Travel Hats (1993).
Material and Technique: Industrial felt; blocked.
Size: Each - 20 x 17 cm.
Photograph: Courtesy of Waltraud Reiner.
Designer: Istvàn Vidàk.
Description: Shibori Woman (2004).
Material and Technique: Merino fleece, indigo dyed, shibori, wet felt.
Size: 160 x 45 cm.
Photograph: Courtesy of Agh Andras.
Designer: Lyn Pflueger.
Description: Ruana (2007).
Material and Technique: Merino fleece, yak and silk fibers, silk chiffon fabric; dyed, nuno techniques.
Size: 127 x 110 cm.
Photograph: Courtesy of Joanne Hamel.
Designer: Jorie Johnson.
Description: First Snow Series: Long Coat (2006).
Material and Technique: Swiss Walliser fleece, polyester fluorescent fiber, knitting yarn; hand felted, seamless technique.
Size: 125 x 65 x 30 cm.
Photograph: Courtesy of You Kobayashi.
Designer: Miriam Carter.
Description: Asian vest with slash scarf (2009).
Material and Technique: Merino fleece, sillk organza, cotton; nuno techniques.
Size: Not available.
Photograph: Courtesy of Gyakyi Bonsu-Anane.
Designer: A La Disposition.
Description: Molded Jacket Fall and Winter (2008).
Material and Technique: Felt; blocked, stitched.
Size: 76.2 x 50.8 x 22.8 cm.
Photograph: Courtesy of La Disposition.
Reference:
[1] Susan Brown, 500 Felt Objects, Editors Note. Mornu and J. Hale, Lark Crafts, an Imprint of Sterling Publishing Co. Inc. (2011).
Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) [1-2]
The Dutch artist Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist, but his primary work was as a printmaker. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Escher spent most of his childhood in Arnhem.
Arnhem is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands, near the German border. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland.
To his family and childhood friends, Maurits was affectionately known as Mauk. He was born to George and Sara Escher in 1898 in Leeuwarden. The youngest of his civil-engineer father’s five sons (two from a previous marriage), Mauk was a sickly child who was interested in carpentry and took music lessons, but failed his final school exams, except for mathematics. His father noted fondly in his diary that the young man consoled himself “by drawing and making a linocut of a sunflower”.
Aspiring to be an architect, Escher enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. He enrolled on 6 September 1919 and on 17 September 1919 he moved to this city. September 1919 was a life-changing month for Maurits Escher. His first lessons in architecture at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem began on 17 September.
It was not until moving there that the artist in him awoke, even if architecture proved to be a false start. His decision to study architecture was mainly inspired by his father, who saw his son as a future architect. His father's plan to have his son study architecture in Delft had failed since Maurits had been rejected for military service on 31 May 1919, and was therefore unable to obtain his high school diploma required by Delft. He had fallen behind due to a serious skin infection, which had kept him out of college for a while in the winter of 1918. Hence, the school in Haarlem was a plan B. That is, a combination of circumstances which later proved to be highly serendipitous. In Haarlem, Maurits got to know his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. He was alert to the young Escher’s qualities and, after only a week of engineering, Maurits switched to studying graphic arts.
Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita (Self portrait, 1900).
While studying there from 1919 to 1922, his emphasis shifted from architecture to drawing and printmaking, upon the encouragement of his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita.
M.C. Escher, Skull, woodcut, second state; counterproof, 1919 or 1920.
After completing his school, Escher travelled for a long time through Italy, where he met his wife Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. They went to Rome, where they stay until 1935.
Escher and Jetta Umiker (her maiden name).
During these 11 years, M.C. Escher travelled every year through Italy where he made drawings and sketches that he later uses in his studio for his lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings.
For example, the background in the lithograph "Waterfall" (1961) (see above) comes from his Italian period.
The trees that are reflected above in the woodcut, Puddle (1952), were also the same trees that he used in his woodcut Pineta by Calvi, made in 1932.
During the time that he lived and worked in Italy, he made beautiful, also more realistic works such as the Castrovalva litho in which one can see already his fascination for perspective - close, far, high and low.
Castrovalva is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in February 1930. Like many of Escher's early works, it depicted the Abruzzo village of Castrovalva, which lies at the top of a sheer slope. The perspective is toward the northwest, from the narrow trail on the left, which, at the point from which this view is seen, makes a hairpin turn to the right, descending to the valley. In the foreground at the side of the trail, there are several flowering plants, grasses, ferns, a beetle and a snail. In the expansive valley below there are cultivated fields and two more towns, the nearest of which is Anversa degli Abruzzi, with Casale in the distance.
He is most famous for his so-called impossible drawings, such as 'Ascending and Descending and Relativity', but also for his metamorphoses, such as 'Metamorphosis I, II and III,' 'Air and Water I' and 'Reptiles.' III.'
Ascending and Descending.
Metamorphosis I (1937).
During his lifetime, Escher made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and more than 2,000 drawings and sketches. Just like some of his famous predecessors – Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Holbein – Escher was left-handed.
In addition to his work as a graphic artist, he illustrated books, designed carpets, and banknotes, stamps, murals, intarsia panels etc. M.C. Escher was fascinated by the regular geometric figures of the wall and floor mosaics in the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century castle in Granada, Spain, which he visited in 1922 and 1936.
During his years in Switzerland, and throughout the Second World War, he worked with great energy on his hobby. He then made 62 of the 137 symmetrical drawings that brought him fame throughout the world. He played with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces. His art continues to this day to amaze and wonder millions of people around the world. In his work we recognize his excellent observation of the world around us, and the expression of his own fantasy. M.C. Escher showed us that reality is wonderful, understandable as well as fascinating.
The artist, who created some of the most memorable images of the 20th century, was never fully embraced by the art world. There is just one work by Maurits Cornelis Escher in all of Britain’s galleries and museums, and it was not until his 70th birthday, that the first full retrospective exhibition took place in his native country the Netherlands. Escher was admired mainly by mathematicians and scientists, and found global fame only when he came to be considered a pioneer of psychedelic art by the hippy counterculture of the 1960s. His prints, adorn albums by Mott the Hoople and the Scaffold, and he was courted unsuccessfully by Mick Jagger for an album cover and by Stanley Kubrick for help transforming, what became 2001 - A Space Odyssey into a “fourth-dimensional film”.
But Escher did not belong to any movement. In a 1969 letter to a friend, he observed testily that “...the hippies of San Francisco continue to print my work illegally”. Many of his letters are reproduced in the standard reference book, 'Escher: The Complete Graphic Work,' edited by JL Locher, which included a full biography and analytical essays by Escher and others. He had been sent a catalogue for a California “Free University” that contained “three reproductions of my prints alternating with photographs of seductive naked girls.” This would have seemed distasteful to the rather formal Escher, who bridled when Jagger addressed him by his first name in a fan letter. According to Patrick Elliott’s catalogue essay, “Escher and Britain,” for the new exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 'The Amazing World of MC Escher,' the artist replied to the musician’s assistant: 'Please tell Mr. Jagger I am not Maurits to him.'
The grave of M.C Escher in Baarn, the Netherlands. Displaying one of his own works “Freedom”. He was born on 17-06-1898 in Leeuwarden and died of old age (73) in Hilversum 27-03-1972.
Since Escher’s death in 1972, his most famous images have become ubiquitous. New fuel for his popular cult was provided by Douglas Hofstadter’s interdisciplinary fantasia of a book, 'Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979)', which seduced generations of curious students in the following decades. Escher adored Bach. Fittingly, given the artist’s mathematical playfulness, some of the richest tributes to his work in modern times have come in the world of video games. In the beautiful Echochrome (2008), players set out to free an eternally walking human from a succession of Escherian landscapes by rotating the point of view until the 'trick' of perspective locks into place.
In a 1963 lecture on '...the impossible,' Escher declared: 'If you want to express something impossible, you must keep to certain rules. The element of mystery to which you want to draw attention should be surrounded and veiled by a quite obvious, readily recognisable commonness.'
This is arguably as true of fiction, or music, as it is of Escher’s brand of geometric sorcery. And it also, in a way, sums up the genius of Escher himself - an orderly man who made inexhaustibly extraordinary things.
References:
[1] https://mcescher.com/about/biography/
[2] The Amazing World of MC Escher at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
Preamble
This is the fiftieth post in a new Art Resource series that specifically focuses on techniques used in creating artworks. For your convenience I have listed all the posts in this new series below:
Drawing Art
Painting Art - Part I
Painting Art - Part II
Painting Art - Part III
Painting Art - Part IV
Painting Art - Part V
Painting Art - Part VI
Home-Made Painting Art Materials
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part I
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part II
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part I
Historical Notes on Art - Part II
Historical Notes on Art - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part IV
Historical Notes on Art - Part V
Tempera Painting
Oil Painting - Part I
Oil Painting - Part II
Oil Painting - Part III
Oil Painting - Part IV
Oil Painting - Part V
Oil Painting - Part VI
Pigments
Classification of Pigments - Part I
Classification of Pigments - Part II
Classification of Pigments - Part III
Pigments for Oil Painting
Pigments for Water Color
Pigments for Tempera Painting
Pigments for Pastel
Japanese Pigments
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part I
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part II
Selected Fresco Palette for Permanent Frescoes
Properties of Pigments in Common Use
Blue Pigments - Part I
Blue Pigments - Part II
Blue Pigments - Part III
Green Pigments - Part I
Green Pigments - Part II
Red Pigments - Part I
Red Pigments - Part II
Yellow Pigments - Part I
Yellow Pigments - Part II
Brown and Violet Pigments
Black Pigments
White Pigments - Part I
White Pigments - Part II
White Pigments - Part III
There have been another one hundred and thirteen posts in a previous Art Resource series that have focused on the following topics:
(i) Units used in dyeing and printing of fabrics;
(ii) Occupational, health & safety issues in an art studio;
(iii) Color theories and color schemes;
(iv) Optical properties of fiber materials;
(v) General properties of fiber polymers and fibers - Part I to Part V;
(vi) Protein fibers;
(vii) Natural and man-made cellulosic fibers;
(viii) Fiber blends and melt spun fibers;
(ix) Fabric construction;
(x) Techniques and woven fibers;
(xi) Basic and figured weaves;
(xii) Pile, woven and knot pile fabrics;
(xiii) Durable press and wash-and-wear finishes;
(xvi) Classification of dyes and dye blends;
(xv) The general theory of printing.
To access any of the above resources, please click on the following link - Units Used in Dyeing and Printing of Fabrics. This link will highlight all of the one hundred and thirteen posts in the previous a are eight data bases on this blogspot, namely, the Glossary of Cultural and Architectural Terms, Timelines of Fabrics, Dyes and Other Stuff, A Fashion Data Base, the Glossary of Colors, Dyes, Inks, Pigments and Resins, the Glossary of Fabrics, Fibers, Finishes, Garments and Yarns, Glossary of Art, Artists, Art Motifs and Art Movements, Glossary of Paper, Photography, Printing, Prints and Publication Terms and the Glossary of Scientific Terms. All data bases in the future will be updated from time-to-time.
If you find any post on this blog site useful, you can save it or copy and paste it into your own "Word" document for your future reference. For example, Safari allows you to save a post (e.g. click on "File", click on "Print" and release, click on "PDF" and then click on "Save As" and release - and a PDF should appear where you have stored it). Safari also allows you to mail a post to a friend (click on "File", and then point cursor to "Mail Contents On This Page" and release). Either way, this or other posts on this site may be a useful Art Resource for you.
The new Art Resource series will be the first post in each calendar month. Remember - these Art Resource posts span information that will be useful for a home hobbyist to that required by a final year University Fine-Art student and so undoubtedly, some parts of any Art Resource post may appear far too technical for your needs (skip those mind boggling parts) and in other parts, it may be too simplistic with respect to your level of knowledge (ditto the skip). The trade-off between these two extremes will mean that Art Resource posts will be hopefully useful in parts to most, but unfortunately may not be satisfying to all!
White Pigments - Part III [1]
Titanium Whites
Titanium Whites are extremely inert, and are unaffected by all conditions which pigments are likely to undergo, including temperatures up to 1,500 degrees Farenheight.
Titanium White.
When first introduced, they were expected to replace lead and zinc whites because of their greater opacity and covering power; but although they are valuable additions to the list of pigments and find a continuous wide use, they have certain properties which limit their application when they are ground in oil.
When exposed to severe tests, their film has a tendency to become both soft and chalky; hence they are most successful as pigments for oil painting when Zinc Oxide, which tends to form hard, brittle films, is added in in amounts varying from 20 to 50%, as is done in white house paints and enamels.
Brittleness of Zinc White compared to Titanium White, Lead White, and other oil colors.
Data adapted from testing done by Marion Mecklenburg, Senior Research Scientist, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC.
In colored or tinted mixed paints, 40 to 50% of Zinc is probably the best proportion. When ground in oil as an artists' color and compared with Zinc and Flake Whites, the Titanium Whites may occasionally turn more yellowish upon short aging. The pigment itself does not change; the yellowing is apparently a surface effect of the oil. The reason for it is possibly that because the pigment is so inert or non-reactive, it does not form the same combinational with the oil that the more reactive Zinc and Lead will do, and therefore favors a more pronounced or thicker continuous oil layer in the upper part of the film, somewhat like that in a glossy paint diagram, which will be revealed in a future post. This yellowing is not extremely bad; it is scarcely apparent when tinting colors are used with white. The titanium whites are rather poor driers in oil, although more rapid than Zinc White; Titanium and mixed Zinc and Titanium oil grounds must be well aged before use.
Fast Dry Titanium White.
In aqueous mediums, titanium is entirely satisfactory, In tempera mediums the difference between it and Flake White is reversed. In tempera, Flake White usually brushes out with difficulty; titanium brushes out well. Pure dry titanium dioxide is sold by one maker under the trade name of Kronos; the product described in the list of pigments as titanium pigment (made with barium sulphate) is sold as Kronos Standard T.
Kronos Standard T.
Equivalent grades, with other trademarks as well as other kinds of less value in artistic painting, are also produced. The pigment made with barium is the one in common use; the pure oxide is somewhat more expensive (but still in a low price range) and, in industry, is employed less often - usually only when extreme opacity or hiding power is required.
Some painters dislike it in tempera and prefer the barium composite, because the pure oxide is so very powerful that it is difficult to wash out of the brush. The British and American titanium products are pure, uniform, and well made. According to Toch, the material as ground in refined linseed oil for artist's use shows none of the defects enumerated above, and under the conditions of artistic oil painting is a thoroughly satisfactory and reliable pigment.
It should be noted that the strong technical features of ti-pure™ pigments make them useful in several industries, making them popular among buyers. These are some notable benefits supported by extensive research.
(a) Opacity and Whiteness: With a refractive index between 2.7 and 2.9, these pigments are highly opaque, making them suitable for use in bright finishes.
(b) Protection from UV rays: This enhances UV resistance in plastics and coatings, leading to lasting products with preserved colors.
(c) Thermal Stability: Maintaining workability at high temperatures is one more reason why ti-pure™ pigments remain stable and robust under difficult conditions.
(d) Low Oil Absorption: In addition to this, these substances are better dispersible, which facilitates real ease while manufacturing since their oil absorption capacity ranges between 20 and 25 g/100g.
(e) Safe and Inert Nature: It should be noted that ti-pure™ pigments do not harm the skin and can thus be used in making cosmetic products to protect against sunburn.
(f) Sustainability Contributions: The use of ti-pure™ pigments on self-cleaning surfaces in construction supports sustainability efforts by complying with modern environmental standards.
(g) Multifunctionality: This is evidenced by their application as food whitening agents which reveals the versatility of ti-pure™ pigments across various industries.
(h) Compatibility: In this light, manufacturers have no problems incorporating these dyes into various formulations, thereby improving performance
(i) versatility.
(j) Regulatory Compliance: Whether used in other industries or its core market, ti-pure™ pigments meet all regulatory requirements and are safe to use everywhere.
(k) Long-Lasting Performance: The result is that product quality and functionality will not fade away with time; instead, they will remain consistent for consumers towards ti-pure™ and pigment-filled projects.
In conclusion, diverse applications supported by technical parameters show numerous reasons why consumers prefer using ti-pure™ pigments in order to enhance product quality and performance. Moreover the titanium pigments have the greatest opacity and the highest tinctorial power of any of the whites. If a gray is made by mixing one part of black with ten parts of Kronos by volume, approximately 25 parts of Kronos Standard T will be required to produce a gray of equal intensity; using white lead, 40 parts will be required, and using Zinc Oxide, 60 parts. The grays produced by mixing black with white lead appear neutral or warm in comparison with cooler, more bluish grays of zinc and titanium. It will be seen that although neither of the defects of Flake White is present in Zinc and Titanium, and although Flake White has none of their defects, we have no entirely perfect White for universal pigment use.
Reference:
[1] The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, R. Mayer (ed. E. Smith) 4th Edition, Faber and Faber, London (1981).
Designer: Yohji Yamamoto.
Designer: Waltraud Reiner.
Designer: Istvàn Vidàk.
Designer: Lyn Pflueger.
Designer: Jorie Johnson.
Designer: Miriam Carter.
Designer: A La Disposition.
