Partage Plus

The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts is a partner in a European wide project called Partage Plus, which aims to research and digitise Art Nouveau material making it accessible to a wider audience. The project will make 75,000 Art Nouveau items from collections throughout Europe searchable through the Europeana website. The Sainsbury Centre is the only UK museum project partner chosen, which is funded by the European Commission and runs until February 2014. The organising institution is the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH) and the Project coordinator is the Collections Trust, the UK's independent organisation for museum collections. There are two elements that SCVA will deliver to the project. The principle element is to digitize the collection of Art Nouveau held by the Sainsbury Centre. The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau contains glass, metalwork, ceramics and jewellery, along with furniture and graphics, collected by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson. The collection includes major works by Louis Majorelle, Ren� Lalique, Emille Gall� and Georges Fouquet. The second element of the SCVA project is to record and document photographically the architectural legacy of the period particularly in Norwich but also across the wider region of East Anglia.

The Centre�s contribution to the project:

• To create 2D and 3D images of objects from the Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau, which will be accessible on the Europeana website.
• To document the local architectural legacy of the period, photographing buildings and features from across Norfolk and Suffolk and making these available online.
• To programme of a series of Art Nouveau focussed events, including The First Moderns, from Nature to Abstraction and a series of talks and handling sessions focussed on Art Nouveau.

Activity completed so far

• Talk on �Art Nouveau after Dark� as part of the national Museums at Night programme
• Handling session with period costume exploring the changes in women�s fashion from 1890-1930
• Photography of buildings and architectural elements from across East Anglia

Unknown Pleasures: The Legacy of Art Nouveau Architecture in East Anglia

An important part of the project is to raise awareness of the Art Nouveau buildings in East Anglia. Although some examples, such as the Royal Arcade (1899) in Norwich are celebrated as nationally important, other examples are poorly documented and deserve to be better known. Architects embraced the style more wholeheartedly in Continental Europe than in Britain, with the notable exception of Glasgow and few complete Art Nouveau buildings were created. This makes a modest group of buildings included in this survey particularly interesting. The celebrated designer W. J. Neatby was responsible for the decorative tile work in the Norwich Royal Arcade, alongside the Norwich architect G. Skipper (1856-1948). The designs were manufactured by Doulton with similar examples in the meat hall at Harrods department store, Knightsbridge, London (1903). The celebrated British architect Edwin Lutyens (1869 - 1944) produced several buildings within the region more generally in the Arts and Crafts style but closely associated with elements of Art Nouveau, such as the Pleasaunce, (1897-9) and Overstrand Hall (1899). For the most part, Art Nouveau found its way into British architecture as a novel touch here and there, or as interiors in the �new style� with wallpaper, fabric or decorative object from Liberty and Co. Many of the buildings included in this survey contain elements or indeed details associated with the style rather than being complete examples in their own right. However the buildings do contain many of the essential ingredients, such as asymmetrical shapes, arches and decorative surfaces with curved, plant-like designs.

More information on project can be found

Europeana website
Partage plus website