To experience history and art, sometimes all you need to do is look down at the floor beneath your feet.
If you're in Old Library, that floor may include century-old tiles from a local tileworks. Those tiles caught the attention of Alexis White, Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art, who researched the tiles and created an exhibit currently on view at Old Library called "History Underfoot."
These beautiful floors demonstrate an Americanist ideology that was commonly referenced in architecture and interior design of the late 19th and early 20th century.
In early April, White had the opportunity to present at the Symposium on the History of Art held at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.
White's presentation, "An Underfoot Ideology: Henry Chapman Mercer's Archaeological Tile Pavements," was about the tiles created by the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown, Pa., in the early 20th century that are installed in Bryn Mawr's Old Library as well as many other academic, civic, and cultural buildings. Other notable buildings with the tiles include the Pennsylvania State Capitol and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
"The designer of the tiles, Henry Chapman Mercer, was a pioneering archaeologist in the last decade of the 19th century," White says. "The 'primitive' look of the tiles reinforces the 'prehistoric' nature of the American continent."
The Frick Collection and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University jointly sponsor the annual Symposium on the History of Art for graduate students in the northeastern United States.
"This special symposium began in 1940 and obviously has a long and important history," White says. "It was meaningful to be among a supportive community of graduate students."
