Screen

Description

Aiken, South Carolina artist, poet and inventor James Mathewes Legaré (1823 - 1859) made this screen out of scraps of cotton canvas and rope wrapped around an iron frame and coated with “lignine,” a material of his own invention and for which he received a patent in 1857. He promoted lignine as “plastic cotton for roofing houses and other purposes.” In the patent, he described the process of deriving lignine by steeping cotton “in a hot solution of any caustic alkali…until [it] is in part freed,” and mixing it with alum, water, sulphate of protoxide of iron, glue, gypsum, and sulphate of lime. Mixed in various ratios, these ingredients rendered any fibrous substrate “capable of being worked up by hand without the use of molds, and so converted into furniture of solid or open patterns and decorations of buildings generally, and into fire and water proof roofing.” Legaré made this screen for his own family’s use to demonstrate an “open pattern” example of durable furniture. Visible under UV light is text that he apparently painted on the rectangular panels including lines from Alfred Tennyson. This scene exemplifies mid 19th-centry rococo revival and gothic revival aesthetics.