Historic Drapery at The New York Public Library

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The famous New York Public Library on 5th Ave in Manhattan is currently showing an exciting new exhibit. It is called Shelley’s Ghost: The Afterlife of a Poet. Below I will explain more about the exhibit.

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Why am I writing about this? A few months ago I received a call from Barbara Suhr an Interior Designer who has designed projects for many institutions including Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, The Jewish Museum, Forbes Inc., American Jewish Historical Society and many other world class institutions throughout the U.S. She asked me if I would like to design historical drapery treatments for this upcoming exhibit at The New York Public Library. Barbara explained that this exhibit was about the poet Percy Shelley, the husband of Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein. 
Here is a link to the exhibit’s website: http://shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/home-page 

Percy Bysshe Shelley
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When we met I presented some photographs of drapery treatments from the early 1800’s. The below drawing is from the book: The Potterton Pictorial Treasury of Drapery & Curtain Designs, compiled by Clare Jameson. The treatment is described as: Design for Venetian Window and Curtain. Pl. XII. G. Smith. The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide. 1826.

  

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I drew some sketches on site which I won’t show. Below are the final sketches I submitted. There were to be two seperate designs. One for the left side of the room and one for the right.

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I suggested a very drapable silk velvet from Kravet Fabrics. Barbara loved the fabric and selected the teal color. We also selected wrought iron drapery hardware from Gaby’s in a bronze finish.

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Here are some photos from the exhibit which will be on display until June

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Below is a description of the exhibit from the library’s website:

For the first time ever, selections from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein manuscript will be available for public viewing in the United States in this exciting exhibition, which is being shown in collaboration with the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England and will highlight the literary and cultural legacy of P.B. and Mary Shelley, and that of her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Using manuscripts, books and relics, the exhibition will tell the truly remarkable – and sometimes salacious – tale of this extraordinary circle of people, complete with wild romances, tragic deaths, exile, revolution and landmark literary accomplishments. The artifacts being shown come from both The New York Public Library’s Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle and The Bodleian. The collections of the two institutions encompass close to 90 percent of all known surviving Shelley manuscripts, and much of the material being shown has never been seen by the general public in the United States before. Materials from the Bodleian haven’t traveled to the United States for over 50 years, so this exhibition will truly be a rare opportunity to see collections that embody a history of literary Romanticism in Britain and the United States. The exhibition will offer a lens through which to see that history.
The show will include:
  • Selections from the manuscript of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.
  • Godwin’s Diary, digitally published with annotations in July 2010
  • Correspondence between William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
  • The Esdaile Notebook containing P.B. Shelley’s youthful work (Pforzheimer)
  • Shelley’s gold and coral baby rattle
  • The only known letter from Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont’s daughter Allegra, who died at 5.
  • A necklace owned by the Shelley family with locks (lockets) of P.B. and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s hair
  • Shelley’s first wife, Harriet Westbrook’s engagement ring and her last letter before committing suicide
  • Percy Shelley’s copy of his first major poem “Queen Mab,” complete with his notes and annotations. The poem was politically-charged, discussing the evils of eating meat and religion, amongst other things. Shelley actually pulled the poem from distribution after it was published, and it was only widely disseminated after his death.

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 A First Edition of Frankenstein

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The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Édouard Fournier, 1889
A romanticised view (painted much later) of Shelley’s friends burning his body
on the beach in Italy after he drowned.(Walker Gallery, Liverpool)

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