to broach controversy i really really struggle with all things victoriana. in england we seem to have an obsessive compulsion that the victorian era was our greatest aesthetic age. why? probably because it is reflected in our shared history with the US and industrial/geopolitical glory.
my thinking follows that the US is our current cultural hegemony. It shares a memory of the victorian period. it's hard for the US to enter an exchange on tudor england because there is no such thing as tudor america. I'm willing to stand corrected but I suspect we like victorian england because the US likes victorian england because it reminds them of an america that shared that period in history. It also reminds us of when britain was great. notwithstanding i struggle - gothic revival just doesn't sound appetising and lots of macabre and fussy architecture later celebrated as victoriana.
that may have to change as we are currently appointed to the redevelopment of the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow - London. i get to be instantly excited because the morris' house was Georgian - and a modest outpost of when England really was in an aesthetic movement to remeber. secondly morris was a craftsman and believed in design, materials and the people who made things. that was embedded in his own work, his writing and his special brand of socialism.
I look forward to learning a lot more and bringing the museum up to a standard that best makes use of an internationally significant collection of arts-and-crafts materials. however i doubt the wallpaper itself is making it beyond christmas wrapping paper in my house.
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