Books by Sheldon Barr

"Experience the spectacle of Venice and its rich history as a glassmaking capital through Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano. This exhibition catalogue is the first comprehensive examination of the American Grand Tour to Venice in the late nineteenth century, revealing the glass furnaces and their new creative boom as a vibrant facet of the city's allure. This gorgeously illustrated catalogue features paintings and prints by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Frank Duveneck, Thomas Moran, William Merritt Chase, Maurice Prendergast, Maxfield Parrish, Louise Cox, and Ellen Day Hale alongside rarely seen Venetian glass mosaic portraits and glass cups, vases, and urns by the leading Murano glassmakers. Reuniting these exquisitely crafted objects with paintings, etchings, and drawings from the same milieu, this catalogue recovers and explains their past significance. Five new essays from experts in the history of American art and of Venetian glass provide the first combined survey of fine and decorative arts from the Venetian Grand Tour, offering a unique and valuable contribution to the fields of American Art and nineteenth-century cultural history. Ultimately, this project demonstrates the lasting impact of the nineteenth-century Venetian glass revival on American art, literature, and education, as well as period concepts of gender and social class."--

The Stroemple Collection boasts more than five hundred vintage Venetian vessels that illustrate the height of Venetian glassblowing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 2012, George Stroemple commissioned James MongrainΓÇöDale ChihulyΓÇÖs current gaffer and an exceptional glass artistΓÇöto make a series of ten vessels to replicate major examples of vintage Venetian glass in the Stroemple Collection. The finished pieces exemplify MongrainΓÇÖs extraordinary ability to re-create traditional Venetian mastery in glass.Since then, the Stroemple Collection has commissioned Mongrain to make more series, all based on the historic works in the Stroemple Collection. For these, Mongrain uses traditional techniques and imagery to reimagine the Venetian style, working on a large scale to create monumental and sculptural pieces that reference tradition but are firmly within contemporary glassmaking. This book documents each of the James Mongrain commissions and will also include various examples of historic Venetian glass that inspired Mongrain in the making of these series.