Children's Page

Nature

Long before Mr. and Mrs. Edward Collings Knight, Jr. decided to build a winter home in Corolla, this area was inhabited. The Currituck Banks were originally used as hunting grounds and camps for the Native Americans of the region. Hundreds of years ago, there were inlets or openings from the Atlantic Ocean into the Currituck Sound so the water was much saltier than today and filled with oyster beds upon which the Native Americans feasted. Some of the islands in the sound also were used as camp sites. One such island, Monkey Island, which was named for the local Pamunkey Indians, is covered in oyster shells discarded by these Native Americans.

Photo courtesy of Mollie Isaacs of F2 Photographic Design

Almost two hundred years ago, the last inlet to Currituck Sound closed and the nature of the water slowly started changing. As rain, rivers, and streams poured into the Sound, the water became a lot less salty. Marshes of tall grasses and wild celery developed and slowly attracted great numbers of waterfowl like geese, ducks, and swans to winter in the area. Soon the Currituck Sound became a heavenly place for hunters. Many wealthy men from the northeast bought land and formed hunt clubs in the area. This site originally had a hunt club called the "Lighthouse Club."

One of the reasons the Knights chose Corolla for their winter residence was because of this special natural environment. They bought the old Lighthouse club property and tore it down after their new home called Corolla Island was built. The Knights' interest in nature is obvious in the house's location and in the way they decorated it using designs from nature. This type of design or style is called Art Nouveau.

Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts Styles

The Knights mainly used two types of art styles to decorate Corolla Island. These were different styles but were popular around the same time period. These styles were used in architecture and furnishings.

The first style is called Art Nouveau which is a French term that means "the new art." The name came from a shop in Paris opened by Siegfried Bing in 1895 called L' Art Nouveau. Bing was an artist who designed things like jewelry and furnishings.

Art Nouveau looked to nature to get ideas for design. Some of its most common characteristics are flowing curves and bowed lines (sinuous) with an unbalanced placement of forms and patterns. The most popular forms from nature used were grasses, water lilies, vines, feathers, and insects.


The other style that can be seen in many places in the Whalehead Club is Arts and Crafts. Where Art Nouveau used flowing curved lines, Arts and Crafts used rigid straight lines. This style was very simple and did not use much decoration. Rather, the style relied on good craftsmanship and was very functional.

A good example of these two styles can be seen in the hallway of the Whalehead Club (or Corolla Island as the Knights called it).

In this picture of the hall, can you point out what is Art Nouveau and what is Arts and Crafts?

Look at the picture of the clock below, can you tell what style it is?

Tiffany

One famous Art Nouveau designer was a man named Louis Comfort Tiffany. He was especially famous for his work with glass. Many of the glass lighting fixtures used by the Knights came from Tiffany Studios.

As a young man Louis Comfort Tiffany showed a great interest in art. While studying under the landscape painter George Inness, Tiffany became inspired by nature. Many of his designs use forms from the natural world.


Some of the most unusual and beautiful decorative pieces at the Whalehead Club are the Tiffany waterlily globes in the dining room. The waterlily was a very popular Art Nouveau form. The globes are cameo glass and are very difficult to make. First, three layers of glass in different colors were blown one after the other. The colors of the glass were clear, white, and green in that order.

Then by using very fine scraping tools and grinding wheels, selected areas of the layers of glass were carved away to reveal the design of a waterlily. This type of glass is very rare because of the incredibly slow and careful craftsmanship involved.

Photos are courtesy of Brad Hamilton