http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/textiles/99mac_maher.html
Portière
Silk and cotton, plain weave, cut solid velvet; appliquéd; embroidered, 1901; 203.7 x 121.9 cm
Restricted gift of the Antiquarian Society, 1971.680
Chicago architect George W. Maher was one of many Americans who embraced the English Arts and Crafts movement, incorporating into his residential designs an emphasis on simplicity, natural forms, and respect for materials. This silk and cotton Portièrehung over a doorway in Maher's James A. Patten house in Evanston, Illinois, built in 1901. The highly stylized and linear thistle motif created for this panel and other elements of the Patten house by Maher and designer Louis J. Millet helped achieve the decorative rhythm and unity that Maher believed was essential to the successful design of any residence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-millet12.html
The extraordinary life of Louis J. Millet -- dismissed by most historians as simply a Chicago stained-glass designer and a collaborator with Louis Sullivan -- has been waiting to be discovered in dusty yearbooks in the IIT archives and vintage reports at the Art Institute of Chicago for more than 100 years.
Research into the history of Main Building on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, which received official landmark status April 1 from the city's Commission on Chicago Landmarks, revealed documents that show Millet was a major player in Chicago's vibrant art world of the early 20th century.
Contrary to his reputation of having lived a life of quiet obscurity, Millet founded the Chicago School of Architecture in 1893. Offered as a multidisciplinary degree program between the Art Institute of Chicago and Armour Institute of Technology (now IIT), aspiring architects learned scientific aspects in classes held in Main Building at IIT, and design principles in classrooms at the Art Institute.
Millet also propelled the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States by teaching decorative design at the Art Institute of Chicago to hundreds of talented students -- predominantly women -- to prepare them for good-paying jobs in the industrial arts.
Based on the French system of creating a school within a workshop, Millet conceived the Chicago School of Architecture as spanning the chasm between engineering and art:
An 1896 promotional circular from the Armour Institute explained, "Early in 1893, a union was effected with the Art Institute of Chicago, for the purpose of developing the course in architecture which that institution had successfully maintained since 1889. The result was the establishment of the Chicago School of Architecture, which also constitutes the Department of Architecture of Armour Institute of Technology."
Millet's strategy was to integrate the fine-science and engineering strengths of Armour with the exceptional art and technology of the Art Institute.
It was also a personal coup for Millet. He held academic posts at both sponsoring institutions as well as serving as the director and eventually the first dean of the Chicago School of Architecture.
Forming the school was "an urgent necessity," Millet wrote in a program circular unearthed during the Main Building research. Arguing that architecture was both a science and an art, he added, "the genius of the American people is so mechanical that the danger in this country lies in placing too much emphasis in architectural education upon mathematics and construction, and too little upon artistic elements. France, the one country in modern times in which architecture is treated as a fine art, is the most successful in the practice of it."
Millet and longtime collaborator George Healy began their educations in Paris in 1874, and remained friends and business partners throughout most of their professional lives. According to the Integral, a yearbook published at the Armour Institute, Millet spent five years at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
He built an impressive record: He won the second medal for his thesis and the medal in Applied Mathematics and General Construction, as well as 15 honorable mentions. "He trained in a different atelier than Sullivan," said noted expert professor David Van Zanten of Northwestern University, "in the much more radical one of Eugene Train."
Train, and in turn Millet, were radical architects who challenged authorities and constantly protested the status quo "like a thorn in the side of the profession," Van Zanten said.
Millet's novel ideas found a receptive audience in Chicago, a city ripe for change after the great fire of 1871, which wiped out a good amount of ugly and uninspiring architecture.
Millet made Chicago his home after completing his studies in 1879. Adamant that Chicago should celebrate beauty as much as science, he established an interior decorator practice with his friend Healy, and together they did much to popularize the artistry of stained glass.
Healy and Millet received a prestigious award in 1889 at Paris' Universal Exposition for their work, and the Department of Decorative Designing and Architecture at the Art Institute under Millet's direction received top honors at the 1893 Columbian Exposition competing against design schools throughout the nation.
Whereas unprecedented honors, momentum and prestige marked Millet's leadership in Chicago art and architecture from 1879-1901, he abruptly disappeared from the Chicago School, and is not mentioned in circulars at Armour in 1902-1903 -- with no replacement in architecture listed for several years.
Why was Millet tossed out of the Chicago School of Architecture in 1901?
In his book Sullivan's City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000), Van Zanten said Millet was "pushed out of the architecture program as it was reorganized on more conventional lines after an internal struggle."
If Millet was humbled by his colleagues, he wasn't deterred from his grand mission of changing the world through artistic design.
Promptly in 1902, while retaining his post as professor at the Art Institute, Millet and some 500 former students of his decorative-design course established an alumni association and hosted prestigious annual Arts and Crafts exhibits that galvanized the movement in America. The annual shows attracted such notables as Louis C. Tiffany and Gustav Stickley, as well as every leading Arts and Crafts artisan from the Midwest, and ran from 1902 until 1923, the year of Millet's death.
Millet was not the last of the great architects to be abashed in their time. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his colleagues "were also tossed out on the street" in 1940, said Catherine Bruck, archivist at IIT. When the Art Institute realized that IIT faculty were still using offices, but not rendering services, for the Chicago School of Architecture -- which had essentially died as a joint program -- the architects were asked to vacate the premises. Mies went on to define modern architecture in the nation from his post as director of architecture at IIT -- in the same radical spirit as Millet had done in the 1890s.
Darcy L. Evon, former technology columnist for the Sun-Times, is executive director of corporate relations at IIT. She is working on a book about the Chicago Arts and Crafts era, and can be reached at Evon@xxxxxxx
--
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To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
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Portière
Silk and cotton, plain weave, cut solid velvet; appliquéd; embroidered, 1901; 203.7 x 121.9 cm
Restricted gift of the Antiquarian Society, 1971.680
Chicago architect George W. Maher was one of many Americans who embraced the English Arts and Crafts movement, incorporating into his residential designs an emphasis on simplicity, natural forms, and respect for materials. This silk and cotton Portièrehung over a doorway in Maher's James A. Patten house in Evanston, Illinois, built in 1901. The highly stylized and linear thistle motif created for this panel and other elements of the Patten house by Maher and designer Louis J. Millet helped achieve the decorative rhythm and unity that Maher believed was essential to the successful design of any residence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-millet12.html
The extraordinary life of Louis J. Millet -- dismissed by most historians as simply a Chicago stained-glass designer and a collaborator with Louis Sullivan -- has been waiting to be discovered in dusty yearbooks in the IIT archives and vintage reports at the Art Institute of Chicago for more than 100 years.
Research into the history of Main Building on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, which received official landmark status April 1 from the city's Commission on Chicago Landmarks, revealed documents that show Millet was a major player in Chicago's vibrant art world of the early 20th century.
Contrary to his reputation of having lived a life of quiet obscurity, Millet founded the Chicago School of Architecture in 1893. Offered as a multidisciplinary degree program between the Art Institute of Chicago and Armour Institute of Technology (now IIT), aspiring architects learned scientific aspects in classes held in Main Building at IIT, and design principles in classrooms at the Art Institute.
Millet also propelled the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States by teaching decorative design at the Art Institute of Chicago to hundreds of talented students -- predominantly women -- to prepare them for good-paying jobs in the industrial arts.
Based on the French system of creating a school within a workshop, Millet conceived the Chicago School of Architecture as spanning the chasm between engineering and art:
An 1896 promotional circular from the Armour Institute explained, "Early in 1893, a union was effected with the Art Institute of Chicago, for the purpose of developing the course in architecture which that institution had successfully maintained since 1889. The result was the establishment of the Chicago School of Architecture, which also constitutes the Department of Architecture of Armour Institute of Technology."
Millet's strategy was to integrate the fine-science and engineering strengths of Armour with the exceptional art and technology of the Art Institute.
It was also a personal coup for Millet. He held academic posts at both sponsoring institutions as well as serving as the director and eventually the first dean of the Chicago School of Architecture.
Forming the school was "an urgent necessity," Millet wrote in a program circular unearthed during the Main Building research. Arguing that architecture was both a science and an art, he added, "the genius of the American people is so mechanical that the danger in this country lies in placing too much emphasis in architectural education upon mathematics and construction, and too little upon artistic elements. France, the one country in modern times in which architecture is treated as a fine art, is the most successful in the practice of it."
Millet and longtime collaborator George Healy began their educations in Paris in 1874, and remained friends and business partners throughout most of their professional lives. According to the Integral, a yearbook published at the Armour Institute, Millet spent five years at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
He built an impressive record: He won the second medal for his thesis and the medal in Applied Mathematics and General Construction, as well as 15 honorable mentions. "He trained in a different atelier than Sullivan," said noted expert professor David Van Zanten of Northwestern University, "in the much more radical one of Eugene Train."
Train, and in turn Millet, were radical architects who challenged authorities and constantly protested the status quo "like a thorn in the side of the profession," Van Zanten said.
Millet's novel ideas found a receptive audience in Chicago, a city ripe for change after the great fire of 1871, which wiped out a good amount of ugly and uninspiring architecture.
Millet made Chicago his home after completing his studies in 1879. Adamant that Chicago should celebrate beauty as much as science, he established an interior decorator practice with his friend Healy, and together they did much to popularize the artistry of stained glass.
Healy and Millet received a prestigious award in 1889 at Paris' Universal Exposition for their work, and the Department of Decorative Designing and Architecture at the Art Institute under Millet's direction received top honors at the 1893 Columbian Exposition competing against design schools throughout the nation.
Whereas unprecedented honors, momentum and prestige marked Millet's leadership in Chicago art and architecture from 1879-1901, he abruptly disappeared from the Chicago School, and is not mentioned in circulars at Armour in 1902-1903 -- with no replacement in architecture listed for several years.
Why was Millet tossed out of the Chicago School of Architecture in 1901?
In his book Sullivan's City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000), Van Zanten said Millet was "pushed out of the architecture program as it was reorganized on more conventional lines after an internal struggle."
If Millet was humbled by his colleagues, he wasn't deterred from his grand mission of changing the world through artistic design.
Promptly in 1902, while retaining his post as professor at the Art Institute, Millet and some 500 former students of his decorative-design course established an alumni association and hosted prestigious annual Arts and Crafts exhibits that galvanized the movement in America. The annual shows attracted such notables as Louis C. Tiffany and Gustav Stickley, as well as every leading Arts and Crafts artisan from the Midwest, and ran from 1902 until 1923, the year of Millet's death.
Millet was not the last of the great architects to be abashed in their time. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his colleagues "were also tossed out on the street" in 1940, said Catherine Bruck, archivist at IIT. When the Art Institute realized that IIT faculty were still using offices, but not rendering services, for the Chicago School of Architecture -- which had essentially died as a joint program -- the architects were asked to vacate the premises. Mies went on to define modern architecture in the nation from his post as director of architecture at IIT -- in the same radical spirit as Millet had done in the 1890s.
Darcy L. Evon, former technology columnist for the Sun-Times, is executive director of corporate relations at IIT. She is working on a book about the Chicago Arts and Crafts era, and can be reached at Evon@xxxxxxx
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html