Dalton News

Artifacts Tell A Story

Students in Sandra Brudnick’s class study the Silk Road with the help of experts in many different disciplines from both inside and outside the school. Dalton’s Resident Art Historian, Dr. Michelle Marcus, introduces them to the concept of artistic style. Using a small blue and white dish from the Museum Program’s teaching collection, they practice using elements of style to determine the possible date and place of production of an artifact.
The students relied on observation, collaboration, and comparison with objects in survey books of world art. Initially, the blue and white glaze led them to parallels among East Asian porcelains – until they started finding similar floral designs among goods from Central Asia. The students noticed a similar sense of symmetry and surface patterning on objects in different media from Iran and other part of the Islamic world, ca. 1500. To their surprise, however, the best parallels – for color, material, crowded composition, symmetry, and surface patterning – occurred on a bowl from Spain. Their initial confusion (Spain is in Europe!) was put to rest when one student recalled seeing similar patterns on a family trip to the Alhambra in southern Spain, built when the region was under Islamic rule. With some students still leaning towards East Asia, the class ended on a note of ambiguity about where the bowl was produced. They nevertheless all agreed that elements of style may help them clarify the past.
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