Tiranti is an art supply retailer, bookstore, and former publisher based in Stoke-on-Trent, England, Tiranti supplies sculptors' tools and equipment, and supplies materials for carving, mouldmaking, modelling, restoration and casting. [1] It also sells art books and media. [2] The firm dates back to 1895 when it was founded by Giovanni (John) Tiranti. [3] In the twentieth century it was a noted art book publisher as Alec Tiranti, specialising in sculpture and furniture.
Industry | retailer |
---|---|
Founded | 1895 |
Founder | Giovanni (John) Tiranti |
Headquarters | Campbell Road, Stoke-on-Trent, England |
Services | art supplies, sculpture supplies. |
Tiranti was at first based in London, although at different location now; its shop was twice destroyed by bombs in the London blitz. The business was moved to Thatcham in 2005. In 2021 Alec Tiranti were bought out by the Potterycrafts Business Group and the business was relocated to Campbell Road, Stoke-on-Trent in September of that year where the Potterycrafts business headquarters are based. [3]
Among the books the firm published were R.W. Symonds' Veneered walnut furniture 1660-1760 (1947), and Frederick Gibberd's Built in Furniture in Great Britain in 1948. In 1951 they published architect and furniture designer Ernő Goldfinger's British Furniture Today [4] and in 1955, Joan Liversidge's Furniture in Roman Britain.
In sculpture and art Tiranti published pioneering sculptor Leon Underwood's Masks of West Africa in 1951 and his Figures in wood of West Africa in 1964. Masks was praised in review for the dual French-English text and the inclusion of photographs of masks previously unillustrated. [5] Techniques were an important part of their output and they published New materials in Sculpture by Hubert Montagu Percy in 1962 and Modelled Portrait Heads by T.B. Huxley-Jones, together with a series of technical booklets.
The publishing side of the business ended with the death of Alec Tiranti in 1971. [3]
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving and modelling, in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city and unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England, with an area of 36 square miles (93 km2). In 2021, the city had an estimated population of 258,400. It is the largest settlement in Staffordshire and is surrounded by the towns of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Alsager, Kidsgrove and Biddulph, which form a conurbation around the city.
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George Claude Leon Underwood was a British artist, although primarily known as a sculptor, printmaker and painter, he was also an influential teacher and promotor of African art. His travels in Mexico and West Africa had a substantial influence on his art, particularly on the representation of the human figure in his sculptures and paintings. Underwood is best known for his sculptures cast in bronze, carvings in marble, stone and wood and his drawings. His lifetime's work includes a wide range of media and activities, with an expressive and technical mastery. Underwood did not hold modernism and abstraction in art in high regard and this led to critics often ignoring his work until the 1960s when he came to be viewed as an important figure in the development of modern sculpture in Britain.
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Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
Most African sculpture was historically in wood and other organic materials that have not survived from earlier than at most a few centuries ago; older pottery figures are found from a number of areas. Masks are important elements in the art of many peoples, along with human figures, often highly stylized. There is a vast variety of styles, often varying within the same context of origin depending on the use of the object, but wide regional trends are apparent; sculpture is most common among "groups of settled cultivators in the areas drained by the Niger and Congo rivers" in West Africa. Direct images of African deities are relatively infrequent, but masks in particular are or were often made for traditional African religious ceremonies; today many are made for tourists as "airport art". African masks were an influence on European Modernist art, which was inspired by their lack of concern for naturalistic depiction.
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