Commons:Project Wolfers

🏡 Commons:Project Wolfers

Browse by: Catalog

Browse by: Creator

Browse by: Collection

Browse by: Exhibition

Browse by: Study/Design for

Study of flowers, drawing (1895) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation

Civilisation et Barbarie, file box (1897-98) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation and Royal Museums of Art and History

Design drawing for vase 'Peacock Feathers' (1899) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation

Peacock Feathers, vase (1899) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation and Royal Museums of Art and History

Design drawing for comb 'Birds and Irises' (1899) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation

Birds and Irises, comb (ca. 1900) by Philippe Wolfers, collection King Baudouin Foundation and Royal Museums of Art and History

Swan Pendant (ca. 1901) by Philippe Wolfers, collection Rijksmuseum

Ondine table centrepiece (1958) by Marcel Wolfers, collection DIVA and King Baudouin Foundation

Project Wolfers brings the vast oeuvre of the Wolfers dynasty together on Wikidata and - where copyright allows - on Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Wolfers (Q61927379) (1820-1892), his son Philippe Wolfers (Q2057733) (1858-1929) and grandson Marcel Wolfers (Q18398076) (1886-1976) were part of a family of prominent Belgian silversmiths and designers of decorative arts - jewellery, sculpture and other decorative items. Many objects that they have designed have been spread out through Belgian and international museum and private collections; their company's archive and many design sketches have been preserved as well.

Several catalogs of the Wolfers oeuvre have been published in book form. With this project on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, the oeuvre is brought together online, as free, Linked Open Data, and is contextualized digitally as well.

This project, started in early 2019, is initiated by Packed/VIAA (BE). Many edits, data and media uploads for this project are performed by Olivier Van D'huynslager.

GLAM pilot project for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons

Project Wolfers is a GLAM pilot project for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons.

The project experiments with

• Uploading data to Wikidata and related media files to Wikimedia Commons, in structured data format
• Data modelling on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons for decorative arts
• Data modelling for a detailed collection where many objects have a close relationship to each other - for instance, inspirational drawings and design sketches for pieces of jewellery
• Copyright clearance and copyright data modelling for objects with several creators, sometimes also (historical) companies

The project is mentored in 2019 by Sandra Fauconnier (Program Officer, GLAM and Structured Data at the Wikimedia Foundation).

Participating institutions

In early 2019, Packed/VIAA has worked together with four Belgian cultural institutions that hold a significant number of works by the Wolfers dynasty in their collections. The main data and media uploads for the project cover the Wolfers collections of:

• Design Museum Gent (Q1809071)
• King Baudouin Foundation (Q2780100)
• Royal Museums of Art and History (Q945059)
• DIVA museum (Q51885460)

See also the (Wikidata-driven) overview page of Wolfers work, grouped by collection.

More input is welcome!

As the overview of works by collection makes clear, many works by the Wolfers dynasty are also spread throughout other cultural (and private) collections around the world. We want to encourage Wikimedia volunteers and cultural institutions to also take part in this project, in order to make documentation of the Wolfers oeuvre more complete.

You can participate and help in (among other things) the following ways:

• Upload free images of public domain works by Louis and Philippe Wolfers;
• Improve data of existing images on Wikimedia Commons, and of existing works on Wikidata.

Sources

The works of the Wolfers dynasty are described in detail in the following catalogs (see also the page with works by catalog):

• Philippe Wolfers' own Catalogue des Exemplaires Uniques (1895-1903) (Q62051000)
• Adriaenssens, Werner (2006) (in Dutch) De Wolfers dynastie: van Art Nouveau tot Art Deco, Antwerp: Pandora ISBN: 9789053252765. OCLC: 150246705.
• Nys, Wim (2011) (in Dutch) Esthétique Moderne: Art-nouveau- en art-decozilver uit de collectie van het Zilvermuseum Sterckshof; [Tentoonstelling Estétique Moderne, 18 oktober 2011-9 april 2012, Zilvermuseum Sterckshof Provincie Antwerpen, Antwerp: Zilvermuseum Sterckshof ISBN: 9789066251403. OCLC: 772703114.
• Goubert, Ko (2012) (in Dutch) Meesterlijk (zilver)design: De Wolfersverzameling, Ghent: Design museum Gent: Designcentrum Vlaanderen vzw OCLC: 842264461.

Additional information about the Wolfers oeuvre can be found, among others, in the following online sources:

• BALaT (Belgian Art Links and Tools), the online database of the Belgian KIK-IRPA (Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium - Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique - Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage)
• Europeana