Domenico Brucciani and the formatori of 19th-century Britain / Rebecca Wade

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910511471903321
• Autore: Wade Rebecca (Rebecca J.)
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: London ; New York, : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019
• ISBN: 1-5013-3222-8; 1-5013-3220-1; 1-5013-3221-X
• Edizione: [First edition.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (198 pages)
• Soggetti: Plaster casts; Art and society - Great Britain - History - 19th century
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Compliant with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Content is displayed as HTML full text which can easily be resized or read with assistive technology, with mark-up that allows screen readers and keyboard-only users to navigate easily
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index
• Nota di contenuto: 1. Introduction: 'wandering Italians' -- 2. Object lessons -- 3. Exhibitions great and small -- 4. Death masks and dance halls -- 5. Building museum collections of plaster casts -- 6. Epilogue: casting aside; 1. Introduction: 'Wandering Italians' -- 2. Object Lessons -- 3. Exhibitions Great and Small -- 4. Death Masks and Dance Halls -- 5. Building Museum Collections of Plaster Casts -- 6. Epilogue: Casting Aside
• Sommario/riassunto: "Born near the Tuscan province of Lucca in 1815, Domenico Brucciani became the most important and prolific maker of plaster casts in nineteenth-century Britain. This first substantive study shows how he and his business used public exhibitions, emerging museum culture and the nationalisation of art education to monopolise the market for reproductions of classical and contemporary sculpture. Based in Covent Garden in London, Brucciani built a network of fellow Italian émigré formatori and collaborated with other makers of facsimiles - including Elkington the electrotype manufacturers, Copeland the makers of Parian ware and Benjamin Cheverton with his sculpture reducing ; machine - to bring sculpture into the spaces of learning and leisure for as broad a public as possible. Brucciani's plaster casts survive in collections from North America to New Zealand, but the extraordinary breadth of his practice - making death masks of the famous and infamous, producing pioneering casts of anatomical, botanical and fossil specimens and decorating dance halls and theatres across Britain - is revealed here for the first time. By making unprecedented use of the nineteenth-century periodical press and dispersed archival sources, Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of Nineteenth-Century Britain establishes the significance of Brucciani's sculptural practice to the visual and material cultures of Victorian Britain and beyond."--Bloomsbury Publishing; Born near the Tuscan province of Lucca in 1815, Domenico Brucciani became the most important and prolific maker of plaster casts in nineteenth-century Britain. This first substantive study shows how he and his business used public exhibitions, emerging museum culture and the nationalisation of art education to monopolise the market for reproductions of classical and contemporary sculpture. Based in Covent Garden in London, Brucciani built a network of fellow Italian émigré formatori and collaborated with other makers of facsimiles-including Elkington the electrotype manufacturers, Copeland the makers of Parian ware and Benjamin Cheverton with his sculpture reducing machine-to bring sculpture into the spaces of learning and leisure for as broad a public as possible. Brucciani's plaster casts survive in collections from North America to New Zealand, but the extraordinary breadth of his practice-making death masks of the famous and infamous, producing pioneering casts of anatomical, botanical and fossil specimens and decorating dance halls and theatres across Britain-is revealed here for the first time. By making unprecedented use of the nineteenth-century periodical press and dispersed archival sources, Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of Nineteenth-Century Britain establishes the significance of Brucciani's sculptural practice to the visual and material cultures of Victorian Britain and beyond