MASTER OF ARTS
HISTORY OF DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN School of Art and Design History and Theory
Selected Master’s Theses of the Class of 2013
It is with great pleasure that I invite you to read about these four theses completed in the MA Program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design this past year. Our students proudly embrace a diverse range of historic and contemporary topics and engage with a wide geographic field, as these theses investigate the United States, Europe, and Brazil. In fact, many students have not limited their research to the parameters of one nation and have embraced an analysis that considers issues related to international concerns of stylistic influence and globalization. I hope you enjoy reading these abstracts and exploring the work of these exciting young scholars who approach design and material culture in ways that will, I am confident, open your mind to a new way of thinking about the world of things. I encourage you to visit the Smithsonian Library at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to read these students’ completed theses, which offer cutting-edge research in the history of the decorative arts and design.
David Brody Director, MA in History of Decorative Arts and Design
MICHELLE JACKSON Michelle Jackson earned an MA in the History of Decorative Arts and Design from Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Parsons The New School for Design in May 2013, and she holds a BA in German Literature and Art History from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Most recently, she led library and archives organization projects at the Neue Galerie New York, Museum for German and Austrian Art and at Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture. She previously worked as a researcher for the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she has instructed Parsons undergraduate courses in Visual Culture, Design History, and Design Studies. Michelle joined the 20th Century Design department at Sotheby’s in Spring 2013.
“Springs of Salvation:”
Theoretical and Literary Readings of Glassware from Bohemian Spas
Advisor: Freyja Hartzell The offerings of spa resorts, or Kurorte, in Bohemia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been addressed from many different perspectives. Architectural history, period literature, and geographic surveys all comprise the historiography of the spa and its ubiquity in the popular conception of physical and mental health for the upper classes in Central Europe and abroad. Utilitarian glassware associated with the spa and sanatorium experience rarely appears in exhibition catalogues as an object of interpretive study. Rather, the available scholarship often focuses solely on connoisseurship, ignoring the value of a material culture interpretation. My thesis addresses the experience of the spa/sanatorium from an interdisciplinary perspective involving both the interpretive study of this specialized glassware and a focused literary and theoretical analysis. In order to explore these objects as noteworthy mediators of the curing process, I discuss glassware as a physical emblem of German and Bohemian material culture. To enrich my formal analysis and contextual placement of the glassware, I examine the role of spa and souvenir glasses made during the Biedermeier and late-nineteenth century periods through the lens of Romantic portrayals of the Central European landscape in fairy tales by Adalbert Stifter as well as Thomas Mann’s portrayals of the sanatorium in early-twentieth century German literature. The English word “spa” omits many of the heightened spiritualistic and mystical connotations surrounding the multiple German synonyms for this word. In addition to Kurort, the synonyms Heilquelle and Heilbad can be translated literally as “spring of salvation” or “wellness bath.” The sense that the spa offered both corporeal and spiritual wholeness delineates a mystical reading of its physical environment. It references the holistic renewal achieved through embracing the natural environment and the material objects that purvey its elements. The ritualistic use of specially crafted objects for taking water is traced to the traditional thermal and mineral springs and baths of Greece and Rome. The study of mineral and thermal springs during the nineteenth century reached its height with the institutionalization of balneology as a medical discipline in universities across Germany and the AustroHungarian Empire. By relating this knowledge and experience of nature to aspects of cultural identity inherently woven into German and Austrian literature, I will argue that spa glasses possess an innate hybrid identity, a combination of varied regional notions of self and location. My thesis addresses Bohemian glassware from visual and literary perspectives in order to draw on the perceptions of Bohemian cultural identities during the early twentieth century. By combining methodologies, I aim to analyze the role of spa glasses and cups beyond basic surface appraisal; this project situates glass objects in the physical and metaphysical realms of the Bohemian region and its literary imagination.
Adriana Kertzer Adriana Kertzer has an MA in the History of Decorative Arts & Design from Parsons The New School For Design, a J.D. from Georgetown University, and a B.A. from Brown University. Adriana is a curatorial consultant for the upcoming exhibit on Latin American design at the Museum of Arts & Design and her thesis will be published by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in October 2013. She is an entrepreneur focused on organizing transnational cultural projects. Adriana has worked at Parsons The New School For Design, CooperHewitt, and Phillips de Pury & Co. In a prior life, Adriana was a lawyer. She was Acting Assistant General Counsel at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and a capital markets lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett focusing on Brazilian IPOs. Adriana is fluent in Portuguese, English and Italian. She is a member of ArtTable, an organization that promotes women leaders in the visual arts. Her website can be found at: www.adrianakertzer.com.
FAVELIZATION:
The Commodification & Fetishization of the Favela in Contemporary Brazilian Art & Design
Advisor: David Brody I set out to understand the ways in which specific producers of contemporary Brazilian culture capitalized on misappropriations of the favela in order to brand luxury items as “Brazilian.” Through three case studies that look at the films Waste Land and City of God, shirts designed by Fernando and Humberto Campana for Lacoste, and furniture by Brunno Jahara, I explain how designers and filmmakers engage with primitivism and stereotype to make their goods more desirable. I argue that the processes of interpretation, transcendence and domination are part of the favelization phenomena. My research locates design as part of a broader constellation of representations that includes a variety of forms from printed media to film. It provides visual and material analyses, as well as theoretically discussions that draw on works by scholars in cultural and postcolonial studies such as John Tagg, Edward Said, Mariana Torgovnick, Mike Davis, and Trinh T. Minh-Ha. While focused on “favelization,” this thesis raises questions about the ethical conundrums associated with using the “Other” in commercial design work.
SaraH Mallory Sarah graduated with High Honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003 where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Science, Technology, and Culture. Her work within the History of Decorative Arts and Design Master’s program focused on the intersection of decorative objects, gender, technology, and culture. Sarah’s thesis sythezises these interestes through an examination of the domestication of the occult in the United States between 1850 and 1970. She graduated with honors from Parsons in December 2012 and currently works as a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. She plans to continue her research on decorative objects and occultism while pursuing a PhD.
Possessed:
The Domestication of the Occult in the United States, 1850 - 1970
Advisor: Barry Harwood Occult-themed decorative objects created for the domestic sphere were key agents in domesticating the occult in the United States. While occultism has always had a presence in American history and culture, this thesis addresses decorative objects produced during three distinct periods when occultism was a mainstream novelty: the mid-nineteenth century, the inter World War years, and the late nineteen-sixties. During these three spells of activity, an eager public rediscovered the hidden realm of occultism – defined in this instance as esoteric beliefs counter to contemporaneous mainstream scientific beliefs and Christian values – and fashioned them into amusing novelties. Beneath this amusement lay a doctrine of domestication: Americans linked commodification and consumption of occulted-themed objects with the ability to domesticate – or reconcile, control, and understand – the occult; accordingly, decorative objects aided in, and in some cases, catalyzed the domestication of the occult. The popularity of occultism among Americans has been in a state of flux since the arrival of the first Europeans to the new world. Far from being the only evidence of the American relationship with occultism, decorative arts are among the most revealing story-tellers of the popular interest in the subject; the survival of these objects is evidence that an interest in occultism existed. Moreover, pop-occult objects also signify America’s struggle to shape a national identity during periods of socio-cultural unrest, specifically dramatic battles over civil rights, war, the rapid rise of science, new technologies, and a boom and bust economy. Occultism became an index of the struggle between forces of subversion, diversity, and diversion. The American desire to domesticate the occult grew from cultural norms that dictated certain esoteric practices and their practitioners as subversive; often, Americans perceived (or conflated) intellectual, moral, and racial diversity as subversive. Yet, the same public that feared occultism responded favorably to the phantasmagoria of esoteric decorative objects that appeared in the marketplace. They purchased items such as fortunetelling teacups, spirit photographs, astrological jewelry, and fortunetelling fans. These objects turned occultism into an amusing diversion rather than signs of subversion or diversity.
Amy McHugh Amy McHugh graduated with specialized honors from Drew University in 2010, where she received her degree in History. Focusing on Early American History of the 18th century, Amy received a fellowship from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic and the Mellon Foundation to explore the religious benevolence work of Philadelphia women from 1780-1810. Following her experience in Philadelphia she enrolled in Parson’s History of Decorative Arts and Design, M.A. program, where she focused on 19th and early 20th century design, more specifically how social events affects the production and consumption of goods. She is currently the Research Coordinator in the Archives at Tiffany & Co., where she is responsible for assisting with the department’s research initiatives and fulfilling the research needs of museum curators, Ph.D. candidates and independent scholars. She has presented various papers on the heritage of Tiffany & Co., focusing on their 19th century cut-glass designs, silver-mounted Favrile glass, and the company’s production of swords during the 1860s.
Tiffany & Co9.’s Cabinet Curiosities:
The Designing, Manufacturing and Retailing of Gold and Silver-Mounted Favrile Glass by Tiffany & Co.
Advisor: Lindsy R. Parrot At the height of America’s fever for artistic goods, the preeminent design firms of Tiffany & Co. and Tiffany Studios collaborated on the creation of over 200 one-of-a-kind silver and gold mounted Favrile glass objects. Dividable into six distinct series and produced over a span of twelve years, from 1897 to 1909, the objects were created under the direction of Tiffany & Co. designers John T. Curran, G. Paulding Farnham, Albert A. Southwick, and Louis C. Tiffany, while the glass was purchased from Tiffany Studios. This paper explores the designing, manufacturing and retailing of Tiffany & Co.’s silver and gold mounted Favrile glass. Drawing from original hollowware blueprints, manufacturing records, photographs, and sales catalogs found in the Tiffany & Co. Archives, as well as the remaining examples of mounted Favrile glass, I explore how the late 19th century and early 20th century social, industrial, and decorative art scene fostered an environment for the creation of the firms’ partnership and for these ‘exotic,’ nature-inspired, one-of-a-kind objects to prosper and eventually fail. Retailed at Tiffany & Co.’s flagship store, this collection of silvermounted Favrile glass magnifies the intricate design aspirations of both firms, highlighting their interests in nature, the ‘Exotic,’ and desire to create luxury items for the growing American market.