There are exhibitions that resonate particularly well with fashionistas (think installations combining clothes and artworks; modern paintings that may have inspired the palette for a collection or events involving avant-garde artists who collaborated with some kind of fashion house). Yet there are also other types of minor exhibitions that do not immediately ring a bell in the mind of fashionistas, but that can be intriguing inspirations for designers.
York-based Fairfax House organised for example this year "The Genius of Grinling Gibbons: From Journeyman to King's Carver" (on until yesterday), an event that celebrated a wood carver and sculptor with some "fashion connections" as we will see.
Born in 1648 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Gibbons moved to Deptford, England, around 1667. He gradually started accepting commissions from the royal family and was eventually appointed as a master carver. He became famous for his work at Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral (see the choir stalls and organ), Trinity College Oxford and Trinity College Cambridge among the others. At the National Trust's Petworth House in West Sussex, the Carved Room features an extensive display of intricate wooden carvings by Gibbons.
In his pieces he usually employed lime wood, creating Baroque garlands incorporating still-life elements, but also furniture and small relief plaques with figurative scenes.
Gibbons was well-known for integrating flowers and vegetables in his carvings (he often included peapods and, according to a legend, he would integrate a closed pod in his work, only carving it open once he had been paid; so if the peapod was left shut it showed that he had not been paid for the work…).
They say that his carving was so exquisite that he once did a pot of carved flowers above his house in London that would tremble from the motion of passing coaches. As Horace Walpole wrote about him: "There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and chained together the various productions of the elements with the free disorder natural to each species."
There were also other types of wood carvings in which Gibbons excelled: the craftsman was indeed a master in reproducing lace as his limewood cravat with raised and openwork carving (dated ca. 1690) proves.
Carved in imitation of Venetian needle-pointlace, such cravats appear in carved decorations associated with Gibbons (like those at Petworth). These pieces were mainly done to show the carver's skill and hopefully impress potential patrons. This particular cravat belonged to Horace Walpole and was normally kept in the Tribune Room at Strawberry Hill, his neo-Gothic villa in Twickenham.
In May 1769, Walpole received some distinguished foreign visitors wearing the cravat and a pair of gloves which had belonged to James I, stating that "the French servants stared and firmly believed that this was the dress of an English country gentleman" (the cravat is now in the collection of the V&A, London).
In fashion the late Alexander McQueen was influenced by Gibbons especially in his last collection that included dresses reproducing carved effects (a motif posthumously printed onto bags to cash in on his idea…) and thigh-high boots with carved heels. Before that, in McQueen's thirteenth collection, simply titled "No.13", the designer had included a fan-like birch plywood skirt and dramatic winged top and prosthetic legs of carved elm wood (modelled on the runway by world-class Paralympic athlete Aimee Mullins).
Will there be any designs inspired by wood carvings during London Fashion Week? Maybe some unique jewellery pieces for a change? Time will tell, as the London runways have just started. But, fear not if that doesn't happen: you can bet indeed that Gibbons' works will remain a great inspiration for many creative minds.
