Anglia Sancta: TEFAF Maastricht 2020

A PASSION FOR XIXth CENTURY ENGLAND

For the past nine years I have devoted myself to the exploration, collection, research and promotion of British furniture and decorative arts of the Victorian and Edwardian period. For many historians, this group of movements and styles is often agreed to have started after the death of A.W.N. Pugin in 1852 and lasted until the beginning of World War I in 1914. During this sixty-two year long period, the United Kingdom produced some of the most important archi- tects, designers and artists of Western art history. The likes of William Morris, Edward William Godwin, Christopher Dresser, C.F.A. Voysey and others turned the second half of the XIXth century into an artistic gilded age. Many of these designers became internationally famous and their creations are now in the collections of the most important museums and institutions around the world, as a rightful recognition of their huge impact on the evolution of design.

For the gallery’s third participation in TEFAF Maastricht, I wanted to honour this long term passion for British art, which culmintated last summer in the opening of our new gallery in London, at 23 Mount Street. More specifically, this year’s selection will emphasize the overwhelming religious atmosphere of this period, largely due to the influence of the Middle Ages on Gothic Revival architects such as A.W.N. Pugin, Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Edward Burne-Jones and the first Aesthetic Movement designers like William Morris. Our theme ‘Anglia Sancta’, borrowed from an 1879 book by James Edmondson, D.D., Priest of the Church of England, will be my tribute to the history and talents of this great country to which, in spite of recent events, I have never felt closer.