Emily Nevill Jackson e le Arti Decorative in Sicilia

Abstract

Through the study of sources and their contextualisation with the panorama of artistic literature of the time, the article aims to present the figure of Emily Nevill Jackson, an English scholar of the Decorative Arts active in London between the end of the 19th century and the first thirty years of the 20th century. Jackson can be counted among the many women scholars who published in the main periodicals of the sector during that period, contributing to a comprehensive representation of the international reality related to the specific sector of Decorative Arts, in the wake of the influence of Ruskin and Morris’ thought. Jackson, in particular, in the final part of her career made a trip to Sicily, of which she published a detailed account in the volume A student in Sicily of 1926, which represents the first real general survey of Sicilian Decorative Arts, describing in detail works, typologies, materials, techniques and collections with a meticulousness and precision that would only be fully and scientifically formulated in later studies.