Tag: Jamaican art

Fig. 1. A mahogany chest of drawers designed by Burnett Webster (1909–1992) and fabricated by master woodworker and sculptor Alvin Marriot (1902–1992), c. 1936. Note how the cresting tops of the stylized carved waves form the drawer pulls. The placement of the waves reflects the balanced asymmetry of real waves rising and falling rhythmically in nature. All furniture in this article, except as noted, was originally in Webster’s personal collection. Atop the chest sits a nineteenth-century Jamaican lignum vitae tobacco jar. Above hangs a photograph of Pocomania, a 1936 sculpture made of Hopton Wood stone by Jamaican artist Edna Manley (1900–1987). All objects illustrated are in the collection of the author; all photographs are by Julia Lynn Photography. Not long after art deco design received an international showcase at the famed Paris universal exposition of 1925, inspired responses to the new style emerged in virtually every field of the applied and visual arts. Beyond architecture and furniture design, the influence of art deco touched glassware, ceramics, and metalwork as well as sculpture, painting, and the graphic arts. Within ten years, iterations of the new cosmopolitan aesthetic had appeared the world over—not only across Europe and Britain and the United States, but also in Japan, Latin America, India, and even in the Caribbean islands. During the 1930s, Jamaican furniture designer and interior decorator Burnett Webster conceived some of the most refined designs of the art deco era—though his work remains little known outside the island. His designs were a reflection not only of Webster’s own talents and artistic sensibilities, but also of the richness of his homeland: composed of native hardwoods such as mahogany, yacca, and tamarind; incorporating decorative motifs inspired by tropical flora and the waves in the sea; and built by