Art Nouveau digitisation campaign launches on Valentine’s Day

Do you Love Art Nouveau? If so, you will love a new campaign brought to you by the Collections Trust and being launched, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day.

Love Art Nouveau is a crowd sourced campaign to encourage people across the UK to find local Art Nouveau architecture and “digitise” it for Europeana, Europe’s online cultural heritage portal.

From 14 February for a week, people up and down the country will be encouraged to take digital images of Art Nouveau architecture and upload it to a dedicated online Flickr image sharing platform. The images will then be displayed on Europeana to help bring the UK’s Art Nouveau heritage to an international audience.

Participants need to follow six simple steps to start sharing their images:

1. Find local Art Nouveau architecture using Google Maps at  http://goo.gl/maps/OeL5Z
2. Go to the building with a digital camera or Smart Phone
3. Take a photo of the building and any Art Nouveau features on its outside
4. Create an e-mail, give the image a name in the subject line, and add location and information about the item in the body of the message.
5. E-mail the image to color31wide@photos.flickr.com ensuring e-mail footers are removed from the message.
6. Visit www.flickr.com/photos/loveartnouveau to see the image and explore the collection!

More information is available on Facebook, and on Twitter at #loveartnouveau. Further details are available on the Collections Link website.

Already in June the team of Steinbichler Optotechnik had photographed beautiful Art Nouveau objects from the collection of the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels. Now the results are in. Enjoy!

If the above embedded image doesn’t show up, try to open the PDF file by clicking here.

The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA) organized an event for museum visitors, students and university staff dedicated to Art Nouveau costumes and the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk. The event – taking place at the University of East Anglia – consisted of an hour long session involving handling of examples of costume and textile from the period supported by a PowerPoint presentation.

The talk successful got people to think about Art Nouveau in a different way, and highlighted the Partage Plus project and Europeana as way of accessing more information on the subject. By having a handling component the ideas of the total work of art and living the ‘art nouveau’ lifestyle could be better understood. It engaged the audience by allowing them to handle objects that they would not normally be able to do. It also expanded on the ‘First Moderns’ exhibition, currently on at SCVA, showing that the themes it explores such as the female form, the influence of Japan and the move to geometric forms went beyond decoration and had a direct impact on people’s everyday lives.

by Michal Stříbrný & Lucie Vlčková

From November 14–26, 2012, selected objects from the UPM’s collections were scanned in 3D, with a total of 245 digital images produced. The anticipated 400 objects could not be scanned during this limited period, and in the course of the work the selection of the items for scanning had to be modified due to technical requirements. The intended choice from the museum’s glass collection was partly replaced with metal ware, textiles and book bindings in a way that provided both a sufficient variability of materials and the presentation of important artworks. Logistically, the “ad hoc” changes of selected objects were quite demanding, due to the independent administration of the museum’s individual departments and their storage rooms. This required that a considerably larger number of workforce had to be involved than had been anticipated. Furthermore, art conservators had to be consulted because certain scanning procedures (notably, turning some objects upside down, or placing them on their upper edges) entailed the risk of possible damage. Therefore, in an effort to eliminate these risks, UPM’s technical team made available professional equipment for stabilizing the objects during scanning. The following summary of the practical experiences and technical problems provides useful information for other Partage Plus partners who are preparing for 3D scanning.

Risk-prone Types of Objects for 3D Scanning Using the Artec D MH Manual Scanner

Glass:

The positive outcome of 3D scanning depends on the type of material, method of execution and decoration of the scanned objects. Transparent glass cannot be scanned well (Fig.1). Coloured glass lends itself better to scanning, but this depends on the degree of the glass’s transparency. When a scanner shines through the glass, the device fails to capture points in space correctly. Similarly, materials with a highly glossy surface deflect flashes of light emanating from the scanner, which generates distorted pictorial information (Fig. 2). A problem can also arise with glass containing  tiny glimmering  particles that deflect the light produced by the scanner (Fig. 3). When a glass item is decorated with tiny, raised details, this also makes scanning difficult (Fig. 4).  Glass adorned with very small textured motifs (Fig. 5) is equally unsuitable. With ceramic objects, problems can be caused by exceedingly shiny glazes.

Base and precious metals:

Metal is a material that is quite suitable for 3D scanning. Surprisingly, the high shine of objects made of precious metals is not a major problem. Small engraved decorative motifs or small parts in relief can be more problematic (Fig. 6). Difficulties appear when scanning objects made of combined types of materials, such as metal and glass, especially in the case of metal-made jardinières, vases or pitchers with clear glass inserts. In such instances, the scanner will capture in detail the metal parts of the object, but will fail to record the variety of shapes of its glass sections (Fig. 7). Small-size items that include most types of jewellery are too detailed to be scanned (Fig. 8). When it comes to silverware, handles can be scanned, whereas knife handles or the ends of fork prongs are too narrow to be shown properly by the scanner. Here, the possibility arises to scan sets of flatware in their cases (Fig. 9). When mirror frames are scanned, the reflective surface needs to be covered with paper or a piece of cloth, which is removed during the subsequent modification of the 3D model on the computer. Should bottoms of objects be scanned to capture particular details that the scanner could not record from above or the side, loose pieces need to be  removed from the item that could fall of when turned upside down (clock pendulums, etc.). 

Textiles:

Only a few textile items were scanned in the museum. Hats and shoes are suitable for scanning. Conversely, small, intricately-rendered textile pieces, such as laces, fans, etc., fall under the category of objects unsuitable for scanning. 

Books:

Book bindings were scanned with no problem whatsoever. A problem can occur with books that are very thin or decorated with tiny details, but in most cases this material lends itself nicely to scanning. During 3D scanning, the  objects are placed on a rotating table. Some objects also require scanning from below. With objects of varied shapes, such as vases, there is the risk that when turned upside down they will lose their stability and tip over. In order to secure hollow-ware in the upturned position, the museum’s technical team devised a wooden stand with extension pieces (Fig. 10) which, after the scanning had been completed, was presented as a gift to the Steinbichler Optotechnik company for further use.

Organized by Wojciech Weiss Museum Foundation

The exhibition “Love and Time” is another presentation of the paintings of the Polish artist Wojciech Weiss and his wife Aneri in the Tyszkiewicz palace in Zatrocze.  In 2009 the exhibition of their works entitled “Beauty came to me…” was the highlight event inaugurating this impressive venue – then only a partly restored mansion. It attracted crowds of visitors and was a great media success. Today the artists’ work return to the completely revitalized palace – in a broader context, which could symbolically be described as the path “from home to home”.

The paintings are presented in the surroundings of what the artists loved, of what built their intimate, private space. The works of Wojciech Weiss enter into a dialogue with those of  his wife  Aneri (Renia) and merge into the stage set composed of objects transferred here from their Kraków family home: high quality furniture, textiles, or decorations. The archive photographs guide us around the exhibition, bringing closer to us the time of a century ago. And even though the paintings of the prominent Symbolist and Colourist of the early 20^th century are the backbone of the exhibition, it is the hand of his wife that shows us around the palace and the living quarters. She reveals the secrets of the children’s room, the sun-lit bedroom or the private space of her study. The interiors permeated by the spirit of Louis XVI and Biedermeier styles interact with the artists works, on which artifacts can be found which illustrate the historical functions of particular rooms. At the exhibition, the icons and religious sculptures which the artist had collected adjoin such details as bathroom furnishings or children’s toys.

Both Weiss and Tyszkiewicz families lived their respective lives to the full in the early decades of the 20^th century, filling their houses with similar furniture, books and souvenirs. Both family heads, Weiss in Kraków and  Tyszkiewicz in Zatrocze, drew the designs of their residences from that of the early neoclassical French château of Petit Trianon. The current exhibition gives us a unique opportunity to appreciate the genuine lifestyle in the house whose beautiful spirit persists regardless of intervening historical turmoil.

The reconstruction design was made possible by the enthusiastic involvement of the artist’s family and the Wojciech Weiss Museum Foundation. The management of the Trakai Historical National Park had obtained support for the unique exhibition design in restored Zatrocze from the Wilanów Palace Museum in Warsaw as well as the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, which is financing the project.

“Välkommen att beskåda väsen, flora och fauna i ljuvaste jugend! Rörstrand Museum visar ett smakprov från alla de jugendföremål som digitaliseras i det pågående EU-projektet Partage Plus.”

“Come and admire nature, flora and fauna in all their beauty on our delicate Art Nouveau ceramics! Rörstrand Museum shows a sample of all the Art Nouveau objects digitized in the ongoing Partage Plus project.”

“Society of Friends of Graphic Arts” or Warsaw etchers of the First Two Decades of the 20th Century

The 100th anniversary of the foundation of the “Society of Friends of Graphic Arts” is going to take place on the 9th of November 2012. One of its founder members was the distinguished graphic artist Ignacy Łopieński (1865-1944), author of reproductions and original works as well as popularizer of the so-called ”intaglio” techniques in the Warsaw milieu and beyond.

In cooperation with art dealers, collectors and other artists Ignacy Łopieński founded the “Society of Friends of Graphic Arts”. Its aim was a renaissance of graphic arts in Poland and their popularization in Polish society. Modelled on societies of etchers active in Western Europe the Polish Society became an important meeting point for graphic artists and lovers of artistic prints. In 1914 the Society organized an exhibition in the Warsaw Zachęta Gallery presenting works from the last last five decades. Furthermore, society members conducted a “Second Polish Henryk Grohman Competition” which took place in 1914 and was a huge success. Due to the outbreak of the First World War further activities of the Society came to a halt. With the reclamation of Polish independence in 1918 other artistic initiatives, among them those headed by Władysław Skoczylas, found their way into the graphic milieu.

According to Piotr Czyż not only the activity of Ignacy Łopieński after his return from Munich at the end of 19th century but also his stay in Paris in 1908 were of major significance for the adoption of graphic techniques by artists such as Józef Pankiewicz (1866-1940) , Franciszek Siedlecki (1867-1934), Zofia Stankiewiczówna (1862-1955) and Feliks Jabłczyński (1865-1928).

3D scanning in the project is carried out by German company Steinbichler. The scanning is carried out on site, with laser scanners, and with absolutely no effect to the artworks. The applications of 3D laser scanning are manifold in the automotive and aerospace industry, but these techniques are more and more often applied in museums as well. In addition to producing virtual models of actual objects, the very precise process of 3D scanning can be applied in restorations as well as condition checking. In general, these system can provide digital data with very high precision.

3D image of Art Nouveau vase (test phase)

The process is very easy: a laser scanner takes precise measurements of the objects from all angles, and this data is then digitally combined with photographs also taken from many angles. Some scanner are capable of retrieving precise structural information (with the laser scanner) along with information on the surface of the object. There are difficulties, as well: transparent objects, such as glass, are very hard to scan. The Partage Plus project will analyze these methods, find ways to ovecome the difficulties, and also examine the potential application of 3D scanning.

One successful application of 3D scanning – and 3D printing – was the restoration of Rodin’s Thinker of the Singer Laren Museum, which was cut up and damaged in a theft in 2007. The restoration was completed in 2011 – you can read about it here, or learn even more on this website. The Steinbichler website also has other application stories. A recent article in The Telegraph also reports on the potential applications of 3D scanning in the artworld.