A Monumental 19th-century Achievement
Excerpt from the book 'Auguste Racinet's Le Costume historique'.
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Hittorf's L'Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs (Polychrome Architecture in Ancient Greece) had appeared in 1851, and in 1854 he published his projects for a temple to the Muses and a Pompeiian villa, projects created for the then Prince-Président Napoleon (later Emperor Napoléon III), who was himself a collector enamoured of classical antiquity. At the same time, Viollet-le-Duc, as Inspecteur des Monuments historiques et des cultes, was encouraging forms of restoration and interior decoration very close to the styles of ornament tabulated by Racinet. One example of this is the Romanesque and Gothic decorations composed by the architect Charles Joly-Leterme (1805-1885) for the châteaux of the Saumur region.
Polychromy came to be applied in all areas of the arts, notably in the lithography which was Racinet's own specialty. This was the technique that he adopted for the superlative plates of the Costume Historique. In so doing, he fulfilled the wishes of Ambroise Didot, chairman of the jury of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, who had "seen nothing so beautiful as the lithochromatic products of the Austrian Royal Printing Works", and sought a Frenchman who could work to the same standard. The technique was particularly suited to the reproduction of illuminated manuscripts, and Racinet had been initiated into the art of color lithography in the ambit of Hangard-Maugé. For this group of archeologically inspired architects, costume was a prime component of the culture of antiquity, a point which all of them emphasize in their prefaces. Viollet-le-Duc gave it a scientific dimension in the seventh part of his Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier de l'époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance (Analytical Dictionary of Furniture from the Carolingian Period to the Renaissance, 1858-1875). He covered clothes, jewelry and ornamental objects in volumes III and IV of this work, his sense of detail driving him to add dressmaking patterns for the Italian Renaissance. Volumes V and VI of this work were meanwhile devoted to arms and their use.
General histories of costume were more and more frequently attempted, and over the course of time the period studied crept forward to include the late 18th century. Thus where as in 1827-1829, Camille Bonnard and Paul Mercuri's Costumes ecclésiastiques et militaires (Ecclesiastical and Military Costumes) had confined itself to classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, after 1858, scholarly interest in later centuries began to extend to the very early 19th century. This interest was not unique to France: in 1852, Becker published a work equivalent to Lacroix's, Kuntswerke und Geräthschaften des Mittelalters und der der Renaissance (Artworks and Implements of the Middle Ages and Renaissance). Becker's enterprise was continued in 1859-1863 by Jacob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck (1811-1903), whose principal fame was as an art historian; he was Keeper of the National Museum of Bavaria from 1868.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Hittorf's L'Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs (Polychrome Architecture in Ancient Greece) had appeared in 1851, and in 1854 he published his projects for a temple to the Muses and a Pompeiian villa, projects created for the then Prince-Président Napoleon (later Emperor Napoléon III), who was himself a collector enamoured of classical antiquity. At the same time, Viollet-le-Duc, as Inspecteur des Monuments historiques et des cultes, was encouraging forms of restoration and interior decoration very close to the styles of ornament tabulated by Racinet. One example of this is the Romanesque and Gothic decorations composed by the architect Charles Joly-Leterme (1805-1885) for the châteaux of the Saumur region.
Polychromy came to be applied in all areas of the arts, notably in the lithography which was Racinet's own specialty. This was the technique that he adopted for the superlative plates of the Costume Historique. In so doing, he fulfilled the wishes of Ambroise Didot, chairman of the jury of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, who had "seen nothing so beautiful as the lithochromatic products of the Austrian Royal Printing Works", and sought a Frenchman who could work to the same standard. The technique was particularly suited to the reproduction of illuminated manuscripts, and Racinet had been initiated into the art of color lithography in the ambit of Hangard-Maugé. For this group of archeologically inspired architects, costume was a prime component of the culture of antiquity, a point which all of them emphasize in their prefaces. Viollet-le-Duc gave it a scientific dimension in the seventh part of his Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier de l'époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance (Analytical Dictionary of Furniture from the Carolingian Period to the Renaissance, 1858-1875). He covered clothes, jewelry and ornamental objects in volumes III and IV of this work, his sense of detail driving him to add dressmaking patterns for the Italian Renaissance. Volumes V and VI of this work were meanwhile devoted to arms and their use.
General histories of costume were more and more frequently attempted, and over the course of time the period studied crept forward to include the late 18th century. Thus where as in 1827-1829, Camille Bonnard and Paul Mercuri's Costumes ecclésiastiques et militaires (Ecclesiastical and Military Costumes) had confined itself to classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, after 1858, scholarly interest in later centuries began to extend to the very early 19th century. This interest was not unique to France: in 1852, Becker published a work equivalent to Lacroix's, Kuntswerke und Geräthschaften des Mittelalters und der der Renaissance (Artworks and Implements of the Middle Ages and Renaissance). Becker's enterprise was continued in 1859-1863 by Jacob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck (1811-1903), whose principal fame was as an art historian; he was Keeper of the National Museum of Bavaria from 1868.
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Auguste Racinet, The Complete Costume History
Hardcover 11.4 x 17.3 in., 636 pages
$ 200.00
$ 200.00
From togas to tailcoats: a fashion time machine
South Sea Islands: Malaysia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia. - Costumes and ornaments, arms and utensils; customs. Tattoos and the functioning of moko, the incised and powder-dyed tattoo, the tatau of the New Zealanders