By ELIZABETH TERRY ROSE
America’s oldest continuously run decorative arts firm, J&R Lamb Studios, was honored Nov. 28 at a symposium sponsored by the Prints and Photographs Division in partnership with the Library’s Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering.
Art and architectural historians and members of the design community assembled at the Library to discuss the Lamb Studios Archive, which comprises 150 years of company records and thousands of original artworks, including preparatory paintings for Lamb’s famously influential stained-glass windows. The archive was acquired by the Library in 2003 and 2004.
Center Director C. Ford Peatross, who guided the archive to the Library, welcomed the audience in the Mary Pickford Theater. His introduction was followed by the first lecture of the day, an illustrated talk by this writer, curatorial assistant in the Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering, titled “Shepherding the Archive: Lamb at the Library.”
This writer described the Lamb “conversation” thus far, giving brief histories of the Lamb family and firm. She also credited the many people who brought the archive to the Library of Congress as well as those on the Library’s staff who worked to make the unprocessed collection more accessible. She invited the audience into the conversation, laying out the basic visual vocabulary with which discussions and inquiries could proceed.
“We are honored to safeguard, research and serve this amazing collection of paintings, each one both a historic document and a thrilling work of art,”this writer said. “We are excited to share with the public the work we have done so far, encouraging more independent research. The more we talk about Lamb and the Lamb Archive, asking questions and seeking answers, the more we can all learn together, gaining a richer understanding of this important firm and its beautiful art,” she added.
Donald Samick, from whom much of the collection was acquired, followed and explained the evolution of Lamb’s aesthetics and business model over its 150 years. Samick started work at Lamb Studios as a young artist and is now the owner of the firm in partnership with his wife and fellow artist, Donna Samick. Samick said that Lamb’s styles and successes were due not only to aesthetic and technical innovations but also to adroit readings of the ever-shifting national and global economy.
Barea Lamb Seeley, great-granddaughter of the studio’s co-founder Joseph Lamb and one of the donors of the archive, was unable to attend but sent her son Timothy Seeley as family envoy. He spoke of his own appreciation of the family’s artistic and historic legacy and then delivered his mother’s remarks, which included girlhood memories of a Lamb art apprenticeship and her work researching and writing the book “Ella’s Certain Window” about the Lamb family and its art.
Virginia Raguin of the College of the Holy Cross, distinguished stained glass and ecclesiastical art scholar, was the final speaker of the day. She placed the impact of Lamb’s art into the larger context of decorative arts and captivated the audience with her observations of hidden allusions and parallels in Lamb’s and its competitors’ and contemporaries’ art through the decades.
A selection of art from the Library’s Lamb Archive art was on display in the Prints and Photographs reading room at the end of the day so that symposium participants could appreciate firsthand the paintings and drawings that had inspired the symposium about a great old American art firm and an important new Library of Congress collection.
J&R Lamb Studios was founded in 1857, preceding and influencing the studios of both John LaFarge and Louis C. Tiffany. It continues to this day to produce ecclesiastical and other decorative arts. The Library’s J&R Lamb Studios Archive includes business and family papers and nearly 2,500 preparatory and study sketches for stained-glass windows, murals, mosaics, furnishings, metalwork and interior architecture. The collection as a whole affords unique insights into changing aesthetics and artistic practices in the United States.
The Lamb sketches in the archive, created from the 1860s to the 1990s primarily for churches, synagogues and other sacred spaces, offer a rich body of information covering more than 100 years of material. The designs are of interest to those involved in decorative arts, architecture, religion, the Arts & Crafts Movement and the continuing revivals and survivals of Gothic and Neo-Gothic forms. The watercolors are also works of art in their own right.
The J&R Lamb Studios Archive can be searched online.
Elizabeth Terry Rose is curatorial assistant for architecture, design and engineering collections in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division.