Italian Giltwood and Walnut Four-Poster Bedstead, 17th century

17th century, Italian furniture

It is often said that a collector collects in order to build a safe world, an alternative world, a kind of nest.  Sir Harold Acton's bedroom, his childhood bedroom, next to his parents' room, is a place he never moved from.  In a house full of collections, he felt most at home in this intimate space filled with what we can surmise are his most beloved collections.  In this treasure-filled room, the bed is focal point.  It is the sanctum sanctorum of the collector's private room.  The official description provided by the museum tells us that this bed is a seventeenth-century Italian giltwood and walnut four-poster bedstead.

Examining the bed, particularly in the context of such an eclectic collection of beloved items, calls attention to its varied styles and finishes.  The carving of the bedframe, headboard, and footboard, which are ungilded walnut, are distinct from the columns that are finished in gold gilt.  The bedframe and headboard appear to be carved in a different style than the columns.  These columns are topped with 4 urns, which have a different metallic finish than the columns themselves.  This leads us to suspect that the bed is itself a collection of objects, styles, and perhaps even periods.  However, it also seems like a perfect bed for an Anglo-Italian leading the villa life on a hillside above Florence.

The bed's place within the composition of the room is also interesting.  Two of the massive columns frame the putti under which there is a painting of the madonna and child, a visual blending of the classical and the Catholic.  It is a composed world, the symmetry of which provides a structure that unites its disparate parts.  For Acton, it is both a beautiful and sacred space.  (Might the bed's columns be repurposed from an architectural element in a church?)  The space feels like the space of an aesthete who admires the beauty of the pagan, the power of the Catholic, and the majesty of connoisseurship.

-Barbara Black (Skidmore College) and Renata Kobetts Miller (City College of New York)

Bureau Cabinet, 18th century

Early 18th century, Italian furniture

Holy Family: Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Pietro Bardellino, 18th century

18th century, Italian painting

Pietro Bardellino was a time-travelling pirate from the outer Hebrides. His real name was Peter Bawdy and appeared in several of Shakespeare's plays briefly in the 18th century, before disappearing and rematerializing in an episode of Frasier. He mastered the craft of painting by doing tourist portraits in Trafalgar Square. He is famous for his use of translucent green pigment derived from orange pips harvested in Drury Lane Theatre.

His paintings are renowned for their invisibility, the current example being a rare exception.

The provenance of the painting can be traced back as far as 1789, when it was hung in the cell of the Marquis de Sade during his incarceration in the Bastille, before briefly passing into the hands of Robespierre. The next time it occurs in a catalogue is when it is associated with the will of Lord Byron's Albanian host, Velly Pasha of Tepelena. It came into Harold Acton's possession when he bought an antique trunk that had belonged to Cyril Graham, the subject of Oscar Wilde's 'The Portrait of Mr WH'.

Antonija Primorac

Merrick Burrow

Pair of Thai Shadow Puppets, possibly 20th century

Summary

Thai shadow puppets are used in both classical and folk theater. There are two types of shadow theater in Thailand: nang talang and nangyai. The size of puppets usually between .75 metres to 1.25 metres. They are made of buffalo or cow hide. Usually the puppets have one articulated arm; clowns typically have two moveable arms. 

The puppet that represents the hero tends to be small with delicate features while the villain puppet tends to be large and unattractive. Puppets who represent gods are always the smallest in size. Clown puppets are ugly and can even have movable chins and genitals, but they are also know to be insightful (much like Shakespeare's fools). 

The puppets are manipulated by puppeteers behind white screens so that they appear as shadows, which makes one wonder why they are so intricately and colorfully painted. A small fire or lamp is used behind the screen, and all of this is managed by single puppeteer who narrates and sings. Four or five musicians accompany the play ("Thailand IX: Theatre," Oxford Art Online, article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/subscriber/a...).

Example of live shadow puppet show