Utility and Beauty: Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America (University of Delaware Press Studies in 17th- and 18th- Century Art and Culture.)

Rating:
Summary: early American architectural ornamentation
Review: UTILITY AND BEAUTY - Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America by Mark Reinberger. U. of Delaware Press, Newark, DE/Associated Univesity Presses, London, United Kingdom. 2004. 190 pp. $65.00 hardcover/8-1/2" x 11", ISBN 0-87413-760-8. photographs, illustrations, map, appendices, notes, bibliography, index.
In the early 1800s in America, composition--or "compo"--was a plaster-like material pressed into intricately carved, detailed ornaments for interior woodwork in homes and buildings, particularly mantelpieces. Robert Wellford (1775-1844) of Philadelphia was the leading maker of compo in the U. S. during this period. The neoclassical flourishes, forms, and mythological and other figures of composition along with patriotic imagery became popular in well-to-do homes along the coast from South Carolina to New Jersey because of the sense of elegance it added to rooms, but also because it was affordable by not having to be imported. Reinberger gives a full account of this American decoration which became prevalent in the early decades of the new nation. His account complemented with many photographs of varying detail deals with the manufacture of the composition, its different styles, the spread of it, and the fading of this "feminine" art form with the coming to favor of the "masculine" style of decoration modeled on the Doric Greek classical style. Wellford's career as a talented and ambitious businessman is also covered. This is a thorough work for architects, decorators, historians, and artists on the relatively brief period of a few decades when compo was the ornamentation of choice in buildings along the East Coast and embodied ideas about high style and desirable expression of the virtues and ideals of the new democracy. Reinberger is an associate professor in the College of the Environment and Design at the U. of Georgia. Historic preservation is one of the courses he teaches.