MATERIALS : Homely Cast Iron Gets Fancy in Show of Its Cultural Qualities
Cast iron traditionally has been the ugly stepsister of the more ornate wrought iron.
But a new show--”Cast Iron From Central Europe, 1800-1850”--creates Cinderella qualities worthy of display behind glass, with special lighting, museum labels and a squad of security guards standing watch.
Among the 230 items on display through Aug. 7 at New York’s Bard Graduate Center for Studies in Decorative Arts are a tiny pincushion shaped like a chair, a pocket-watch holder in the shape of a sunflower and a fan in delicate filigree.
There are also hair ornaments, necklaces, decorative boxes, letter scales, sewing notions, thermometers, paperweights, a sugar bowl, incense burners, medals, candlesticks and busts--and a scale model of a furnace like the one used to create ore so the iron could be cast.
The show and catalogue tell the little-known story of the cultural and economic role that cast-iron objects played in 19th-Century Europe.
“At the beginning of the 19th Century, the wave of popularity enjoyed by applied arts objects cast in iron originated in a single place, in Germany,” according to Elisabeth Schmuttermeier.
Schmuttermeier is co-curator of the exhibit and curator of metalwork at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, where the exhibition originated in an abbreviated form.
While factories in other countries eventually caught up, Germany and surrounding territories were the major exporters of decorative cast iron to Europe and the United States in the first half of the 19th Century.
Why such artfulness lavished on such a base material? Partly because a new technology allowed molten iron to be poured into delicate forms. Also, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia wanted to boost his country’s economy, and he needed precious metals for the war effort against Napoleon. So he furnished his palace at Potsdam with cast iron, hoping his subjects would follow suit. He also used cast iron to barter for valuables.
“Those subjects who donated their valuable gold jewelry to be melted down to pay for the war received cast-iron pieces of jewelry in return, inscribed with the words: ‘I gave gold for iron,’ ” Schmuttermeier said.
While intrinsically interesting in itself, the exhibit demonstrates the role that style plays in determining value. It also points to a trend of scholars taking seriously what once was considered trivial.
As more consumers buy antiques and collectibles, many want to learn more about them, said Derek Ostergard, co-curator of the exhibition and dean of the Bard Graduate Center.
The school offers a master’s degree in the history of the decorative arts, publishes a scholarly journal, “Studies in the Decorative Arts” and has a library with 15,000 volumes on the history of decorative and fine arts.
Sponsored by Bard College in Annandale, N.Y., the graduate school is one of a handful of institutions offering advanced training in the history of the decorative arts.
