Metal-Work and Its Artistic Design
Category: Preserve for the Future
Location: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library
Metal-work and its artistic design
Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-1877) was a British architect and art historian who championed the role of the designer in the manufacturing process. He was most famous for his two volume work, The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, which he composed as Secretary of the Great Exhibition of 1851. This book, Metal-Work and Its Artistic Design, is a beautifully illustrated manual focusing on the collaboration between the artist and the process of metalworking with gold, silver, bronze, and iron. Wyatt offers useful and aesthetically pleasing examples of metal-work across Europe. This important and early guide was instrumental in pioneering the industrial design profession.
A mid-19th century volume bound in red library buckram. The buckram is showing signs of wear and is detaching at the first section. The textblock contains color illustrations on acidic paper. Many pages are torn and some have previous repairs. The repairs were made with unsympathetic materials such as pressure sensitive tape and stickers. Conservators will remove the cover and attempt to repair it; as it is not original, they may opt to replace it. The previous repairs will be removed and re-done using Japanese paper and wheat starch paste. A custom enclosure will be created to house this valuable item.
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