Eye and Hand is a new exhibition in The Courtauld’s Book Library Foyer. The exhibition is a student project which was led by Courtauld Faculty member Professor Katie Scott. It explores the relationship between design and manufacture in textiles, through the collection of Lionel Harris (1862—1943) donated to The Courtauld in 1972.
The exhibition illustrates a range of loom and hand technologies for wool and silk, focusing especially on eighteenth-century French silks, the strongest single group in the collection. Joubert de la Hiberderie’s treatise on the art of The Silk Designer (1765) is the historical lens through which the relation of the designer’s eye and the weaver’s hand is observed and explained.
Lionel Harris was a London art and antique dealer who established the Spanish Art Gallery in Mayfair in 1898 and specialized in Old Master paintings by artists ranging from El Greco to Goya.
Eye and Hand: The Art of Silk Design runs from 1st March to 8th July 2016 in The Courtauld’s Book Library Foyer.