Word: intarsia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1951-1951
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pietra Dura (Hard Stone) was one of the busiest places in Florence. The duties of its craftsmen members: turning out the intricate designs of inlaid marble and semiprecious stones with which the Medici loved to decorate their palaces and chapels. After the Medici, the art, known as stone intarsia, went out of fashion; but a handful of institute members kept its difficult technique alive, occupied themselves mainly with repairing intarsia objects in Florentine museums and copying the old-fashioned designs...
Last week some strikingly new intarsia was on display in Manhattan. In place of the elaborate baroque scrolls, shells and garlands of the 16th and 17th Centuries, there were surrealist nudes reclining in desolate plateaus, a composition of pistols and playing cards after William Harnett, gay conglomerations of striped balloons, kites and butterflies-all laid out in marble, malachite, lapis lazuli...
...done most to modernize the old Florentine craft is Artist Richard Blow, 47, of Manhattan. Five years ago, Blow, an old intarsia admirer and part-time resident of Florence, called together the few remaining craftsmen, convinced them that some new ideas might help revive their art. He offered financial help, the use of his studio, and a few of his own designs...
...five intarsia workshops in Florence, using the same age-old techniques for cutting, fitting and polishing the stone by hand, are supplying compositions to dealers in Florence and the U.S. Blow reports especially encouraging sales in Texas: "People from Texas are crazy about designs of pistols and playing cards." With his current exhibit almost sold out, Blow has already commissioned designs from Italian Painters Giorgio de Chirico and Massimo Campigli, is hoping to interest Picasso, Braque and Miro. "Intarsia may be a minor art," says bluff Dick Blow, "but hell, it's better to turn out a good piece...