I'm Dreaming of Textile Mills in Vienna, Night and Day!

ALMANAC-

June 9, 1768: Samuel Slater, creator of the American textile industry, was born. "Samuel Slater was an early American industrialist popularly known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" or the "Father of the American Factory System" because he brought British textile technology to America. A native of England, he was apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt in Belper as a manager in a cotton mill of the type pioneered by Richard Arkwright at Cromford. In 1789 he violated a British emigration law that prohibited the spread of British manufacturing technology to other nations. When he left for New York, he had memorized the plans for the mill and had a deep understanding of Strutt's managerial practices. He offered to sell his knowledge to American industrialists, doing so to Moses Brown, who used the plan, and made major profit. He soon found work in Massachusetts and Rhode Island replicating British factory equipment for a textile mill, and earned the owner's backing to design and build the first water-powered cotton mill in the United States. Slater established tenant farms and towns around his textile mills such as Slatersville, Rhode Island. Due to his technical knowledge from Britain, he became a full partner and eventually went into business for himself and grew wealthy. By the end of Slater's life he owned thirteen spinning mills. Samuel also known as the "Father of the American Sunday School System" establishing youth Bible classes in his mills after the pattern of Strutt and Arkwright.' "

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June 9, 1810: Otto Nicolai, German composer, conductor, and founder of the Vienna Philharmonic, was born. "Nicolai is best known for his operatic version of Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor (Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor). In addition to five operas, Nicolai composed lieder, works for orchestra, chorus, ensemble, and solo instruments."

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June 9, 1891: Cole Porter, American composer and lyricist, was born. "Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. His works include the musical comedies Kiss Me, Kate, Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady and Anything Goes, as well as songs like "Night and Day," "I Get a Kick out of You," "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin." He was noted for his sophisticated, bawdy lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms. Porter was one of the greatest contributors to the Great American Songbook. Cole Porter is one of the few Tin Pan Alley composers to have written both the lyrics and the music for his songs."

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ON OUR SHELVES-

"Memoir of Samuel Slater, The Father of American Manufactures. Connected with a History of the Rise and Progress of the Cotton Manufacture in England and America. With Remarks on the Moral Influence of Manufactories in the United States"

By George S. White.

Published in Philadelphia; Printed at No.46, Carpenter Street: 1836.

The earliest and best biography of the “Founder of the American Industrial Revolution”, written by a friend.

$275.00

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Painters & Photographers & Self-Promoting Manipulators -Oh MY!!

NOTED IN THE NEWS-

- Exhibition Testifies to an Unknown Period in Stanley Kubrick's Career : A new exhibition of 300 photos, many of which are unpublished and printed from the original negatives, taken by Stanley Kubrick from 1945 up to 1950 when, aged 17, was hired by the American magazine Look... read the full story

Paul Gauguin, a self-promoting manipulator?? NO!! [mock surprise]

- Paul Gauguin exhibition reveals artist as self-publicist and truth manipulator : "Tate Modern to shed new light on sensual and sensationalist painter in UK's first major Paul Gauguin exhibition in 50 years..." read the full story


ARTS ALMANAC-

April 20, 1840: French painter Odilon Redon was born. Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon was a French Symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined. I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."

April 20, 1850: Daniel Chester French, American sculptor, was born. "French was a founding member of the National Sculpture Society, and he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. French also became a member of the National Academy of Design (1901), the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Architectural League, and the Accademia di San Luca, of Rome. Together with Walter Leighton Clark and others, he was also one of the founders of the Berkshire Playhouse, which later became the Berkshire Theatre Festival. In 1940, French was selected as one of five artists to be honored in the 35-stamp "Famous Americans" series. French was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts after his death in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1931 at age 81. Chesterwood, French's summer home, studio, (designed by his architect friend and frequent collaborator Henry Bacon) and garden is now a museum."

April 20, 1893: Joan Miró, Spanish painter, was born. "Miro was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramist born in Barcelona. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting."

"The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me."


IN OUR STORE-

"Late 18th & 19th Century Textiles"

By Sue Kerry.

Published by Francesca Galloway Gallery & the Antique Collectors' Club in 2007.

A sumptuously-illustrated book, surveying the colorful, shimmering topic of French Neoclassic, Empire, Restoration, and Historicism-movement, and English Aesthetic and Arts & Crafts textiles. Labeled as "Volume 1" because the gallery also published a catalog on 20th century textiles.

$75.00

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