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Document Details : Title: Het archief Ivo Bakelants Subtitle: Een inventaris van de glasramen in België uit de 19de en 20ste eeuw ontsloten Author(s): ANQUINET, Emma , LECOCQ, Isabelle Journal: Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design Volume: 39 Date: 2014-2016 Pages: 177-188 DOI: 10.2143/GBI.39.0.3170122 Abstract : This article discusses the Bakelants archive, which was compiled by the Antwerp glazier Ivo Bakelants (born 1934). Following his training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the National Higher Institute for Fine Arts (Antwerp) and the Institute of Art History (Brussels), Bakelants founded his own glazier’s workshop in Deurne in 1958. His oeuvre within the art of glass painting is quite varied and he was influenced stylistically by the imagery of other artists such as Jan Huet (1903-1976) and Eugeen Yoors (1879-1977). From 1972 Ivo Bakelants’s studio developed into an artistic meeting place where he, together with his wife and fellow artist Antonia Cools, organised numerous exhibitions for young artists and colleagues from Belgium and abroad. Alongside his career as a teacher and his active participation in Antwerp’s cultural and artistic scene, Bakelants also contributed to the art historical research into the art of glass painting in Belgium in the 19th and 20th centuries, an area of study that is attracting ever more attention these days. He published several articles on the subject and, following the work of the art historian Jean Helbig (1895-1985), he wanted to make a contribution to the recognition of the Belgian art of glass painting in the 19th and 20th centuries by means of an inventory project. Ivo Bakelants visited numerous public buildings throughout Belgium that contained stained-glass windows from the 19th and 20th centuries and he collected data about these sites (name of the building, number of windows and their iconography, name of thee glazier, additional documentation, etc.) that he brought together in an extensive archive. This work of a lifetime comprises approximately 5500 records containing information about 5290 sites and 787 stained-glass workshops along with accompanying archival documents, most of which is located in the documentation and research centrum KADOC in Leuven. In 1983 Ivo Bakelants began to publish his work independently, but only the first three volumes (A, B and C) were published. Thanks to Mrs Madeleine Manderyck of the Heritage Agency, who is also Secretary of the Corpus Vitrearum Belgium, the archive was entrusted to the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in collaboration with the Corpus Vitrearum Belgium. One of the first objectives was to make the records available by means of digital publication. Because of the size of the collection it was decided to enter the data from the index cards into an alphabetical index. In addition to this document, the digital publication of the Bakelants archive comprises a preface, an informative note, a list of all glaziers included and of lost windows, as well as a biographical note on Ivo Bakelants himself. A second objective of the project was to link Ivo Bakelants’s documentation with the objects recorded in the database of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage. The result of this research is an effective and valuable tool for the promotion of art-historical and scientific research into Belgian glass painting of the 19th and 20th centuries. |
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