Dom Martin: the Art Deco Jewels of a Benedictine Designer

Renaissance Quarterly

2018

Session: Ornamenta Sacra. The Art of Liturgy and the Liturgy of Art. HNA Conference, Ghent, 24/05/2018

Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, 2022

The story of an ecclesiastical and secular embroidery atelier operating from 1883 through to the 1930s in North Adelaide, South Australia. This paper was awarded the James MacGinley Award 2022 by the Australian Catholic Historical Society. https://australiancatholichistoricalsociety.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/achs-journal-43-2022.pdf

University of St Andrews, 2020

In 1246, when Pope Innocent IV saw embroidered copes and mitres which were made in England, he exclaimed; "England is for us surely a garden of delights, truly an inexhaustible well; and from there where so many things abound..." Embroidery made between 1200-1350 in England, known as opus anglicanum, was internationally recognized, traded, gifted, collected, and coveted. The technical skill combined with a distinct aesthetic resulted in an iconic textile brand. Though first described as a brand in the context of contemporary imitated textiles, I extend this understanding by close visual analyses and archival readings.

Paper presented at Historic and Modern Assemblages: Treatments of Wood based Multimedia/Art Works/Interiors in Context ICOM-CC Interim Meeting • April 8-10 2016, Potsdam

This book offers an essential reference for anyone interested in contemporary European jewellery design. Through guided conversations with the major designers of today, Roberta Bernabei reveals the creative, conceptual and technical working practices that underpin the aesthetic of each practitioner's work. In addition, the dialogues shed new light on these jewellers' inspiration and their ideas about functionality and the human body. In the book, each interview is supported by photographs, a detailed bibliography and an appendix that locates the jewellers' work in galleries, museums as well as online. Major jewellery artists present include: Giampaolo Babetto, Gijs Bakker, Otto Künzli, Ruudt Peters, Mario Pinton and Tone Vigeland, alongside members of the emergent generation: Ted Noten, Annamaria Zanella and Christoph Zellweger. Book published by Bloomsbury (ex Berg) in 2011.

It has long been noted that there was a decline in the standards of English embroidery from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. A combination of the Black Death, wars, overseas competition and economic stresses have all been recognised as possible reasons for the loss in quality of these embroideries. This article analyses the production techniques employed by artists/designers and embroiderers during the declining period of Opus Anglicanum, a style of embroidery typical of the late medieval period, which was almost always professional work. The discussion focuses on two lower panels of the pillar orphreys on the Whalley Abbey altar frontal, which date from around 1400 and belong to Towneley Hall Museum and Art Gallery, 1 Burnley, UK. The article suggests that similarities in the design of the two panels provide a glimpse into the time-saving solutions developed by embroiderers to produce Opus Anglicanum as its manufacturing quality deteriorated.