Sarah Mead Leonard
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smeadleonard.bsky.social
Sarah Mead Leonard
@smeadleonard.bsky.social
1.6K followers 880 following 300 posts
Associate Director of Fellowships and Academic Programs, Newberry Library (all views my own). PhD. Victorian Art History, #MaterialCulture, #HistoricLandscapes, those kinds of things. Also running @morris-on-screen.bsky.social
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smeadleonard.bsky.social
Sarah Mead Leonard @smeadleonard.bsky.social · Nov 10
Hello all, it’s so exciting to see so many new and familiar people popping up here! For new followers, I’m an art historian and museum professional with a focus on c.1850s-1910s British decorative art, fine art, and physical landscapes.
And I have a very good cat named Thistle, that’s important too.
A selfie of a person and a cat looking very seriously into the camera. The person has short brown hair, round blue glasses, and a dark floral shirt. The cat is supremely grey and fluffy.
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
biodiversitypix.bsky.social
🌳 Field book of western wild flowers /.
New York: Putnam, 1915..

[Source]
Illustration from the 1915 "Field book of western wild flowers" showing two detailed botanical line drawings of hydrangea species. The upper drawing depicts "Small Syringa - P. microphyllus," with slender stems, small rounded leaves, and clusters of five-petaled flowers. The lower drawing shows "Syringa Philadelphus Californicus," featuring a thicker stem with larger, elongated leaves and dense flower clusters with more rounded petals and prominent stamens. Both illustrations focus on the plant’s distinctive floral structures and leaf shapes, rendered in precise black ink lines on a beige paper background, typical of early 20th-century botanical art.
November 7, 2025 at 3:23 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
Reminder that this is tomorrow - putting together the presentation now, and excited to be talking about Morris and the Thames again!
smeadleonard.bsky.social Sarah Mead Leonard @smeadleonard.bsky.social · Aug 28
I'm excited to say I'm taking part in the Totally Thames Festival 2025, presenting "William Morris's Thames: Inspiration and Resource" for the William Morris Society UK.

The talk will take place online on Wednesday, September 24th, 6-7pm London time.

thamesfestivaltrust.org/whats-on/wil...
Thames Festival Trust - William Morris's Thames: Inspiration and Resource @ Totally Thames 2025 - Thames Festival Trust
An illustrated lecture exploring William Morris's relationship with the River Thames through his beautiful patterns.
thamesfestivaltrust.org
September 23, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
merryrobin.bsky.social
A thread of Inuit art that you didn't know you needed, starting with one of my favourites
🧵
merryrobin.bsky.social Robin (she/he-ella/él) @merryrobin.bsky.social · Jan 5
Sheouak Petaulassie was an Inuk artist.
Her art can be found at the National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Glenbow Museum, the Hood Museum of Art, the UBC Museum of Anthropology, the U. of Michigan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, & the Art Gallery of Windsor.
"Sheouak Petaulassie drawing beside her child in a tent, Cape Dorset, Nunavut", photo by Rosemary Gilliat. She is seated at a table, wearing a traditional Inuit outfit trimmed with fur. She is holding a pencil, looking at the camera mid-drawing, as if just interrupted. Her child is playing next to the table, but we can only see a little bit of them. There is a sewing machine behind her, it looks like a creative environment. An elegant stencil print titled "Three Walrus" by Sheouak Petaulassie, 1960. It features three abstracted walruses set against a plain white background. They are depicted in a minimalistic way that captures a lively social moment between them. Half of their bodies is submerged in water.
September 9, 2025 at 7:23 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
Excited that my work with @morris-on-screen.bsky.social gets a mention here!
economist.com The Economist @economist.com · Sep 12
Even if you know nothing about William Morris, you will recognise his work. But the prevalence of his prints is ironic, given his principles
The ironic ubiquity of William Morris’s prints
An exhibition and a new collection point to his enduring appeal
econ.st
September 12, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
morris-on-screen.bsky.social
Fiddler on the Roof, 1971

William Morris, "Chrysanthemum", 1877
A scene from Fiddler on the Roof (1971): Tevye enters a room, following a woman. The room is decorated in Victorian style, with brass table lamps and objects, a sofa upholstered in a dark floral with a lace cover on the back, dark curtains, and Morris & Co. "Chrysanthemum" on the wall. All of the colors are very muted.
September 12, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
cara.city
Ken Shirriff’s whole article here goes into the history of Navajo involvement in chip fabrication, it’s very interesting: www.righto.com/2024/08/pent...
September 7, 2024 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
cara.city
oh my god a year ago, almost to the day, I made a post about this and today, it's right in front of me at MOMA
A quilt made from the design of a Pentium chip, it's red and light blue and made of streaks of darker and lighter color
September 8, 2025 at 7:26 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
A nice Wikimedia Commons find from this week - a floral diagram of a wallflower (Erysimum bicolor "Bowles' Mauve"), made from the flower itself.

#FloralFriday #FlowersOnFriday
A bloom of Erysimum bicolor (wallflower), deconstructed and laid out in the style of a floral diagram illustration so all parts of the flower can be seen. It creates a mandala-like arrangement of pistil, stamens, and petals. The petals are bright purple-magenta, the pistil bright green, and other elements white, light green, and light purple, all on a black background.
August 29, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
pjvphotography.bsky.social
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
A pika sits on a mossy rock. Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head. An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye. An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.
August 28, 2025 at 4:18 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
I'm excited to say I'm taking part in the Totally Thames Festival 2025, presenting "William Morris's Thames: Inspiration and Resource" for the William Morris Society UK.

The talk will take place online on Wednesday, September 24th, 6-7pm London time.

thamesfestivaltrust.org/whats-on/wil...
Thames Festival Trust - William Morris's Thames: Inspiration and Resource @ Totally Thames 2025 - Thames Festival Trust
An illustrated lecture exploring William Morris's relationship with the River Thames through his beautiful patterns.
thamesfestivaltrust.org
August 28, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
ianmcque.bsky.social
Lake District farm buildings, watercolour
Watercolour painting, a Lake District landscape with farm buildings
August 26, 2025 at 10:25 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
For #TextileTuesday, here are some objects I fell in love with while poking around on the V&A collections website last week: samples of woven fabrics designed by C.F.A. Voysey between 1895 and 1900, woven in strips to show different colorway options.
Sample of "The Duleek", a woven fabric with a symmetrical repeating pattern of trees, stags, swans, and doves. The motifs are flattened and stylized. The pattern is woven in strips of five colorways: tonal green, purple blue and green, tonal orange-reds with greyish doves, tonal yellow-orange, and tonal teal blue. Sample of a woven fabric with a repeating pattern of highly stylized trees, in a shape almost like a playing card spade, rising from layered hills. The pattern is woven in strips of four colorways: tonal yellow, tonal pink-purple, tonal orange-reds, and multi-colored pink, purple, and dark green.
August 26, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
btfstills.bsky.social
WILD HIGHLANDS (1961)
An image captured from WILD HIGHLANDS (1961)
August 26, 2025 at 5:51 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
Something I find endlessly fascinating about American TJ Maxx is that they clearly have a deal with a UK overstock distributor, and that distributor offers generic gift shop goods but also branded products. Thus: a mug of National Trust East Midlands properties, purchased in Western North Carolina.
An array of three mugs a kitchen table. Their designs are: lavender and bees; a cartoony illustration of National Trust properties shown on a map, with the text ‘East Midlands’ inside the rim; and a Eurasian goldfinch and a blue tit on teasels. They all have TJ Maxx price tags ($5.99 each) and the map and lavender ones have Made in England stickers. Closer detail of the East Midlands mug showing more properties. It’s slightly out of focus so the property names can’t be read, sorry.
August 26, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
smeadleonard.bsky.social
Did you know: The inventor of the Erector Set donated at least two of his champion German shepherds to the Yale Peabody Museum as specimens.

collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/Recor...
YPM MAM 004925
Canis familiaris Linnaeus, 1758
collections.peabody.yale.edu
August 21, 2025 at 10:04 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
For #FragmentFriday, here's a nice bit of fabric I came across this week.

Furnishing fabric, printed cotton. Possibly Bannister Hall print works, c. 1870-1890.

V&A CIRC.1034-1925

To give some idea of the pattern scale, this piece's width is about 34 cm, or just over 13 inches.
A piece of fabric with a light green background, decorated with a naturalistic pattern of large clusters of purple rhododendron blooms with yellow centers, connected by spindly brown branches with small green leaves.
August 22, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
arthistoryanimalia.bsky.social
For #WorldGoatDay 🐐:
Asai Kiyoshi (Japan, 1901-1968)
#Goats, c. 1950s
color woodblock print
ukiyo-e.org/image/wbp/89...
#JapaneseArt
vertical color woodblock print, illustration of two goat heads in profile facing opposite directions, white goat facing left behind and black goat facing right in front
August 22, 2025 at 2:47 AM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
Did you know: The inventor of the Erector Set donated at least two of his champion German shepherds to the Yale Peabody Museum as specimens.

collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/Recor...
YPM MAM 004925
Canis familiaris Linnaeus, 1758
collections.peabody.yale.edu
August 21, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
lornarichardson.bsky.social
We’re going to hell in a handcart, but some 2500 years ago someone in what is now modern eastern Italy made this kyathos to mix wine in and it’s still an object of deep joy
A Daunian kyathos from Fiesole in Tuscany. It’s a flat bowl with an anthropomorphic handle which looks like someone holding their arms in the air
August 5, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
alisonfisk.bsky.social
Two little quail chicks carved on a limestone plaque over 2,000 years ago.

Look closely to see a third chick sketched in ink!

From Egypt, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period, 400–30 BC.

📷 Met Museum www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

#ReliefWednesday
#Archaeology
The photo shows a limestone plaque with two carved quail chicks and a sketch of a quail chick in black ink. It is displayed against a grey background. Traces of ink occur on both carved chicks suggesting the limestone plaque shows three stages of an ancient Egyptian artisan’s work; the ink sketch at top left, the finished chick at upper right, and the almost finished chick at bottom left. Limestone plaque dimensions: H. 15 x W. 13.8 x D. 0.9 cm Likely representing the quail chick hieroglyph for the sound ‘w’
July 30, 2025 at 4:22 PM
smeadleonard.bsky.social
Happy #WorldEmbroideryDay!

This panel, held at the V&A, is a great example of how Morris & Co. sold much of its embroidery: not as finished pieces, but as kits.

The piece would be started by a Morris & Co. worker, demonstrating the recommended techniques, then sold with all necessary supplies.
A panel of cream-colored cotton with an outlined design of intertwining stems, leaves, and anemone flowers drawn on. A small portion of the design has been stitched in silk threads: a blue-green stem, one large yellow-green serrated leaf, a few smaller leaves in various shades of green, two small orange buds, and two mid-sized anemone blooms in shaded pink. A small portion of the background is also stitched, in white.
July 30, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
jessemlocker.bsky.social
Santiago Rusiñol y Prats, Jardí d'Aranjuez. Glorieta II (Garden of Aranjuez. Glorieta II), 1908, Oil on canvas, 140 x 135 cm (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid)
A painting of a flowered pathway in the Royal Gardens of Aranjuez, Spain
July 29, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
themountaingoats.bsky.social
July 23, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
christopherpittard.bsky.social
The Muppet Sense and Sensibility.
jessemlocker.bsky.social Jesse Locker @jessemlocker.bsky.social · Jul 15
Philip Reinagle, Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog, 1805, oil on canvas, 28 1/4 × 36 1/2 in. (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond)
A spaniel playing "God Save the King" on the piano, looking out at the viewer with a worried expression
July 15, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Sarah Mead Leonard
patrickkapty.bsky.social
Ingrid perfume bottle
malachite glass
Riedel Glassworks
Bohemia, Czechoslovakia
1930s

#artdeco #bohemianglass #vintageperfume #artdecoglass #artdecodesign #vintage1930s #art #riedelglass #czechoslovakia #handmade #artglass #malachiteglass
July 14, 2025 at 1:28 PM