Event From Date
Event End Date
Event Title
SAA is organising a talk by Prof. John E. Cort
Event Details
The School of Arts and Aesthetics,
Jawaharlal Nehru University
invites you to an illustrated talk:
At the Intersection of Jain Art and the Arts and Crafts Movement: Jain Wooden House Shrines in American Museum Collections
by Prof. John E. Cort
Department of Asian and Comparative Religions
Denison University, Ohio
Tuesday, October 31, 11:30 am
Room 102, SAA – I Building
Gujarati Jain wooden house shrines (ghar derasars) are one of the wonders of Indian sculpture, but have been little studied, and so are not very well known. Why, therefore, are there at least nine of them in American museum collections? Answering this puzzle led John Cort to investigate the life and career of Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932). De Forest was the last of the Hudson River painters, and also a well-known Arts and Crafts designer in late-19th and early-20th century America. Much of his design work incorporated Gujarati wood carving, which he imported in collaboration with the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company. His interest in Gujarati wood carving also led to him arranging for some masterpieces of this craft to enter into American and British museum collections, and spark an interest in it among American art collectors.
John E. Cort is Professor at the Department of Religion at Denison University (Granville, Ohio, USA), where he also teaches in the International Studies Program. He is an expert on the Jains, and his research combines both ritual studies and art history. He has served as a consultant on three international exhibitions of Jain art: Peaceful Liberators (Los Angeles, Fort Worth, New Orleans and London, 1995-1996), Victorious Ones (New York, 2009-2010) and Puja and Piety (Santa Barbara, 2016).
