folly cove
Tomorrow (15 April) we trek to the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, to see displays and materials from the archives of the Folly Cove Designers, including samples of their printed textiles and paper, items made from their fabrics and examples of the linoleum blocks they carved. The group was established in 1938 and lasted until 1969. We are grateful to Jim Falck for the suggestion. Information on the Folly Cove designers here.
in retrospect (21 April) —
I was struck by discussion of the internal "jurying" system by which group members would critique each other's work and presumably decide what could be issued under the name "Folly Cove." Many of the Folly Cove people were accomplished professionals — art educators, an architect, editors, art directors, illustrators. Among them were graduates of Vassar, the Boston Museum School, Salem Normal School, and Massachusetts College of Art. This was a diverse collection of women and men. I don't imagine their respective personal aesthetics always meshed, and wonder about the internal dynamics of the group.
The Folly Cove Designers were not an art colony, as such. It had no guiding ideology or social cause, such as motivated Myles Horton's founding of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, in 1932. This group centered around or grew out of the design classes offered by Virginia Lee Burton, and ended with her death. Still, the designs shown in thumbnail in Folly Cove Designers, a brochure published by the Cape Ann Historical Association in 1996 (?), evidences a variety of styles, some abstract, some folkish, none naive. Some of the work holds up to the present-day eye, some less so. One detects a hint of W. A. Dwiggins visual waggery, here and there. My favorite are some stunning designs by Elizabeth Iarrabino (died March 9, 2009), with their confident abstraction of botanical, animal and insect forms. All of the work attains a consistently high standard of craft and formal abstraction, presumably owing to (1) jurying, (2) the maturity of all of the artists, (3) Virginia Lee Burton's oversight and (4) her foundational homework assignments, emphasizing design principles like figure/ground relationships, tonalities, scale.
We were invited to look through the fascinating homework notebooks of Eleanor Curtis, mimeographed from carefully laid-out typescript originals. These, and a video that we watched, demonstrated methodical variations of single motifs.
sources —
Several online resources on the Folly Cove Designers are bookmarked at the design stories delicious page.
The Folly Cove Designers were not an "artists' colony, and yet existed in the Gloucester/Rockport area that is (or was?) known as one. There exist studies of specific art colonies in North America and Europe, including Kristian Davies, his Artists of Cape Ann : A 150 Year Tradition (2001), but few on artists' colonies in general. Exceptions include Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Phaidon/Oxford, 1985), and Nina Lübbren, Rural Artists' Colonies in Europe 1870-1910 (Manchester University Press, 2001). Books on the Folly Cove Designers include Barbara Elleman, Virginia Lee Burton, A Life in Art (Houghton Mifflin, 2002); the aforementioned brochure published by the Cape Ann Historical Association (1996?); and Folly Cove Designers: A Retrospective, June 27 through September 7, 1982, published by the same association in 1982.
An exhibition of Virginia Lee Burton's work, curated by Barbara Elleman, is currently running at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst (March 24 – June 21, 2008), more information here.
in retrospect (21 April) —
I was struck by discussion of the internal "jurying" system by which group members would critique each other's work and presumably decide what could be issued under the name "Folly Cove." Many of the Folly Cove people were accomplished professionals — art educators, an architect, editors, art directors, illustrators. Among them were graduates of Vassar, the Boston Museum School, Salem Normal School, and Massachusetts College of Art. This was a diverse collection of women and men. I don't imagine their respective personal aesthetics always meshed, and wonder about the internal dynamics of the group.
The Folly Cove Designers were not an art colony, as such. It had no guiding ideology or social cause, such as motivated Myles Horton's founding of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, in 1932. This group centered around or grew out of the design classes offered by Virginia Lee Burton, and ended with her death. Still, the designs shown in thumbnail in Folly Cove Designers, a brochure published by the Cape Ann Historical Association in 1996 (?), evidences a variety of styles, some abstract, some folkish, none naive. Some of the work holds up to the present-day eye, some less so. One detects a hint of W. A. Dwiggins visual waggery, here and there. My favorite are some stunning designs by Elizabeth Iarrabino (died March 9, 2009), with their confident abstraction of botanical, animal and insect forms. All of the work attains a consistently high standard of craft and formal abstraction, presumably owing to (1) jurying, (2) the maturity of all of the artists, (3) Virginia Lee Burton's oversight and (4) her foundational homework assignments, emphasizing design principles like figure/ground relationships, tonalities, scale.
We were invited to look through the fascinating homework notebooks of Eleanor Curtis, mimeographed from carefully laid-out typescript originals. These, and a video that we watched, demonstrated methodical variations of single motifs.
sources —
Several online resources on the Folly Cove Designers are bookmarked at the design stories delicious page.
The Folly Cove Designers were not an "artists' colony, and yet existed in the Gloucester/Rockport area that is (or was?) known as one. There exist studies of specific art colonies in North America and Europe, including Kristian Davies, his Artists of Cape Ann : A 150 Year Tradition (2001), but few on artists' colonies in general. Exceptions include Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Phaidon/Oxford, 1985), and Nina Lübbren, Rural Artists' Colonies in Europe 1870-1910 (Manchester University Press, 2001). Books on the Folly Cove Designers include Barbara Elleman, Virginia Lee Burton, A Life in Art (Houghton Mifflin, 2002); the aforementioned brochure published by the Cape Ann Historical Association (1996?); and Folly Cove Designers: A Retrospective, June 27 through September 7, 1982, published by the same association in 1982.
An exhibition of Virginia Lee Burton's work, curated by Barbara Elleman, is currently running at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst (March 24 – June 21, 2008), more information here.
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