Museum Accessions

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts recently acquired a games table Designed by Henry van de Velde and made By H. Schneidemantel Hofkunsttischlerei, Weimar, Germany, circa 1906. Belgian-born Henry van de Velde was a leading avant-garde designer in the French Art Nouveau and German Jugendstil movements. His sinuously curving interiors and furniture demonstrate the harmony of Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art—in which architecture, furnishings, and fittings were conceived as a whole.

This rare games table exhibits the curvilinear elements characteristic of both styles. Van de Velde’s strong confident lines animate the sturdy compact form. The tabletop’s four triangular sections fold out to form a larger leather covered, square gaming surface. Small shelves below can be used for games counters or drinks.

This delightful object enriches the Minneapolis Institute’s furniture holdings within its prominent modernism collection, which features the work of such architect-designers as Joseph Maria Olbrich, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Peter Behrens, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

A chair designed by Aurthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851-1952) for the Century Guild, London; made by Collison and Lock, London, c. 1883 was recently acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California.

When this chair, designed by English architect A.H. Mackmurdo about 1883, was introduced to the public at the “Inventions Exhibition” in Liverpool in 1885, critics praised its “very original design” and “breaking away from custom.” Now, when discussing the genesis of art nouveau, virtually every book on the subject includes an image of it. With undulating seaweed forms on its fretwork back, the chair predates by about a decade the curvilinear motifs that characterized art nouveau on the Continent. An equally seminal example of the arts and crafts movement, the chair was produced by the century guild, the first organization after William Morris’s company to declare complete allegiance to the unification of all art forms and a return to the handmade. It is the first joint purchase by the Los Angeles County Museum and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens—two museums with world-class collections of British design and a particular commitment to interpreting and displaying the arts and crafts movement. Visitors to the Huntington’s Art Collections may see the chair in gallery 220 at present.