19TH C. BRASS SHEET DESIGNED BY LOCKWOOD DE FOREST & AHMEDABAD CRAFTSMEN

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19TH C. BRASS SHEET DESIGNED BY LOCKWOOD DE FOREST & AHMEDABAD CRAFTSMEN:
$250.00

BRASS SHEET DESIGNED BY LOCKWOOD DE FOREST & AHMEDABAD CRAFTSMEN

Lockwood de Forest. A brass sheet produced by Indian craftsmen in the employ of de Forest in the late nineteenth century, 11 1/4\" x 5 1/4\", \"No.181\" (the pattern number) stamped in the narrow blank margin, the thin sheet slightly bent and creased, slightly discolored on one side, brilliantly gold on the other. Matted, framed in gold frame and glazed; suitable for display. This design is one of several hundred in brass that de Forest commissioned from artisans in Ahmedabad, for use in an applied art or architectural capacity we have not identified.

Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) spent 1881 and half of 1882 in India with his wife Meta, purchasing tiles, carvings, facades, jewelry and textiles for Associated Artists, the interior decoration firm Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler, Samuel Colman and de Forest established in 1879. Several fashionable Associated Artists-designed interiors included the antiques de Forest sent to the States, but due to the difficulties he encountered in purchasing original work (which he blamed on the caste system, saying that it made people reluctant to sell), de Forest was obliged to employ craftsmen (as many as 100 at one point) in Ahmedabad to make reproductions of designs he encountered on his long trips throughout the country. Following the breakup of Associated Artists in 1882-1883, de Forest established an office and showroom at 9 East 17th Street, New York, where he displayed his imported adaptations of Indian antiques: teak carvings, pierced stone panels, brasses and stencils. De Forest continued to promote the \"Indian movement\" he envisioned through the first decade of the new century. Two rather extraordinary publications of his document the artist\'s passion for things Indian: Indian Domestic Architecture (1885), which in addition to photographs of carvings and facades, includes two plates showing the 17th Street showroom; and Illustrations of Design (1912), in which de Forest elaborates his theories of Indian design.