International Neo-Grec: Luxury of the Ancients Reinterpreted for an Industrializing Age
Kyle McGuire, San Francisco, CA

Detail of bronze portrait medallion on cabinet by Alexander Roux, New York

French marble and gilt bronze clock with garniture urns, Paris, Unknown Maker, ~1860 – 1870s
Collector and American Design and Arts Forum Board member Kyle McGuire will present the highlights of his collection of Neo-Grec furniture and decorative arts and tie them back to the history and development of this unique period in American and European design history.
This era bridges the tail end of the small hand-based workshop with the flowering of larger design and furnishing firms. These newer firms were taking full advantage of industrial techniques to produce and market a wide variety of highly ornamental goods at various levels of quality and price.
The presentation will walk through some of the key elements, motifs, and design source material used in Neo-Grec pieces of the 1860s and 1870s. He will cover connoisseurship, how to distinguish Neo-Grec from other historical revival Victorian styles, and how the style fits into the long arc of over five centuries of Neoclassical design. The talk will also cover preliminary research into the designers and print sources of this under-studied area of 19th century decorative arts.
Kyle McGuire is an avid collector and researcher of 19th century design and architecture. He studied Graphic Design and received a BFA at the California College of the Art (formerly California College of Arts and Crafts). He currently works in the technology industry as a principal product designer for a large cybersecurity company. He has served on the Forum board since 2013 and served on the board of the Victorian Alliance of San Franciso for over a decade. In his free time he is working on the restoration of a 1891 Italianate flat near Alamo Square and building up his archive of 19th century design books and collection of decorative arts objects.