Our Notes & References

An impressive folio volume of 20 full-page colourful plates, many with silver and gold highlights: “the most complete of the collections of Estonian national ornaments published” by then (Taal, our translation here and elsewhere).

Scarce: although the work can be found in public institutions, we couldn’t trace any example at auction in recent decades.

“Popular applied arts and handicraft of [a] small [nation] whose treasury of original forms and ornaments has hitherto not yet been disclosed to the world” (Päts).

Estonian artist and art educator Voldemar Päts (1878–1958), brother of Estonia’s first president, Konstantin Päts, served as director of the Estonian State School of Art and Crafts (now the Estonian Academy of Arts) from 1914 to 1934. The school was established in 1914, at a time when Estonia was still part of Tsarist Russia. Its curriculum was modelled on that of the Stieglitz Academy in St Petersburg, where many of the school’s teachers—including Voldemar Päts himself—had received their training.

“In order to give a survey of the great richness of [Estonian] national art”, as well as to create a manual for decoration in Estonia, Päts published this collection—”the most complete of its kind”—of a diverse range of decorative designs used in Estonian arts and crafts (Päts). “An important work that popularised the ornamentation of national costumes” (Teras), the book contains over 50 patterns in colour with silver and gold highlights, based on examples of women’s handicrafts and national dress and everyday objects.

In the preface in Estonian, French, English, and German, Päts states that the work would be issued periodically in parts and would ultimately comprise one hundred colour plates. However, it appears that no further issues beyond the present ones (Parts I and II in a single volume, containing 20 plates) were ever published. All the copies we have located share the same collation as the present example.

The development of a national style in support of Estonian identity—especially significant in a country that had only recently attained independence—gained particular momentum in the latter half of the 1920s, when folk art was promoted more actively than before (Teras). Päts’ work quickly became an important manual in Estonian art schools: “handicrafts, ceramics and other techniques and arts (even architecture) made extensive use of national patterns, and in the 1920s and 1930s there was no comparable material from which students and future artists could draw inspiration” (Raabe).

In 2023, the Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Eesti Kaasaegse Kunsti Muuseum) dedicated a section of its exhibition Raudmehed by Jaanus Samma to this edition.

Provenance

Eesti Vabariigi Konsulaat Brüssels (red ink stamp to upper cover and fly-leaves)