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Originally posted by TBeholder

There was a thread on art objects.
But more generally, what sorts of art objects are there?

Wood/bone/stone carving are omnipresent.
Engraving and etching (probably any place with decent metalworking).
All sorts of jewellery.
Anything to do with cloth - probably any place with cloth.
Carpet weaving - at least in Calimshan and on Zakhara.
Stone mosaic - at least in Calimshan.
Stained glass mosaic - in nobles' houses at least in Cormyr (according to Volo's guide). Probably in temples all over Faerun?
Obviously, most types of sculpture and some sort(s) of painting.
Tattoo is probably uneven in spread - we know it's common in Thay, and in specific contexts among the wood elves and on Zakhara. There are few sources on the other places.
Maztica has feather-weaving.
What about drawing? Lead or silverpoint?

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Originally posted by Ed Greenwood (via THO), Candlekeep, Ask Ed '04, 18 Oct 2004

I’ve never really had the opportunity to properly explore painting, sculpture, and music of the Realms in detail, in print thus far.
It’s a big topic, from the humble wind-chimes (stones, bones, and shells hung on rawhide thongs across many a farmstead doorway or window, to tell of trespass or rising breezes) to the elaborate ‘song-cycles’ with silent acting of scenes in the background (bards sing and play in foreground, occasionally pointing at the actors and commenting on the dramatic scenes from the past or the invented romance that are being acted out, though the actors never speak) favoured in the most ‘civilized’ human cities. Elves always dance (often using magic so they can ‘fly’ and so engage in aerial ballets), and their actors always sing and orate. Dwarves and gnomes rarely dance, and their actors tend to unison-chant (plainsong) and orate. Halflings try just about anything, as do human minstrels doing broad comedy. And so on.

Illusions and magic are mistrusted by most common folk, so the most they’re used in dramatic arts are wizards using illusions to provide animated ‘you are there’ scenes of important battles and events to audiences at feasts and formal gatherings (with forewarning, to avoid upset or violence), or the illusions of spell effects at dramatic moments in a play.

The wealthiest nobles sometimes purchase paintings that have minor illusions cast on them suggesting motion (hair of person stirring occasionally in unseen winds, a smile that comes and goes, the gaze of the depicted person moving about, small gestures), but again, most people regard these as “creepy” and want nothing to do with them. Most nobles commission these to impress (and hint that the paintings harbour more formidable defensive magics, so would-be thieves and other intruders had best beware).
Most folk buy paintings as portraits of places they’d visited, such as Waterdeep (yes, as “I’ve been there” souvenirs!), remembrances of realms they had to leave behind (usually birthplaces); portraits of monarchs they revere; holy events (usually mortals receiving divine aid or rapture rather than actual depictions of deities) of faiths they follow; or people they know (parents, more remote ancestors, loved ones, or selves). Pictures of people are sometimes painted as plaques (palm-sized slate or wood carry-arounds, either carried wrapped or fitted with little ‘doors’ like many a modern real-world dartboard), but are usually life-sized, shoulders-up pictures hung on walls in the best rooms of domiciles or guild offices. Most curio shops in Waterdeep have an assortment of ‘portraits of dead nobodies’ hung up for sale, and yes, there’s a brisk trade in portraits of scantily-clad female beauties, often mounted ‘on the back’ of a family portrait so the thing can be hastily turned around when Aunt Oskaula comes to call.
Most guild offices have the symbol of the guild (guild, coster, and family badges and full heraldic displays are the most popular ‘expensive art,’ by the way) hung up on the wall as a painted wooden carving, a portrait or portraits of the founder(s) of the guild, prominent past (long dead and famous in their field) guild members, and present and past guildmasters. A few guilds have begun to demonstrate their wealth in a way increasingly adopted by ‘wannabe-noble’ rich merchants (but thus far, sneeringly dismissed by ‘real’ nobles, at least in Waterdeep): they’ve purchased ‘waiting-room’ paintings, usually of guild-related elements (smiths would have anvils, forgehammers, tongs, and so on), that are ‘everchanging’ or ‘living.’ These terms are, of course, misnomers: what such paintings (typically large dark square pieces) really do is to display the same sequence of painted elements over and over.

To use the smiths’ example: a fire kindles and seems to ‘grow’ out of the painting, tongs and a bar of metal can be seen thrusting into it, and then the flames fade to reveal an anvil looming up. As it ‘drifts’ forward dramatically, the now-glowing bar is lowered onto it, a forgehammer smashes down on it twice, the scattering sparks wash away anvil and bar to leave just the mighty hammer (backlit by forge-glow). We see it slowly rise and fall, emphasizing the force with which it is wielded, and then it fades to reveal a tiny tumbling object that comes ‘out of the distance’ towards us, growing rapidly in size. We see that it’s a horseshoe, and then it dwindles again, back into flames that become the kindling fire (and the cycle repeats from there).
Such pictures are the latest fad, although some of them (like paintings of fires blazing in hearths) have actually been available for years. They’re very expensive, and it remains to be seen if they’ll really catch on outside of Waterdeep, Athkatla, and the largest cities of Sembia.

Which brings us to sculptures. As with paintings, abstract sculptures are almost unknown in human art (elven art often employs sweeping curves that suggest ocean waves but that incorporate elements that might be spreading branches, or straining wings). Statuettes, particularly small pieces no taller than the length of a human forearm, are quite common. Most are crude depictions of human heads, ‘severed’ orc heads (often with comical ‘bumpkin’ expressions rather than trying to look horrific), or full-body human figures (nude female dancers are popular, of course), and many are placed as finials atop fence-posts, gate-spires, and the like. In at least one place, Tharsult, statuettes have been used as money.
Many dwarves and gnomes dwelling in human cities spend their lives carving small stone statues for sale to folk desiring to ‘dress up’ their gardens or homes with either dramatic warriors (often passed off as ancestors) or, again, feminine beauty in various forms. Halflings more often carve in wood, and elf artisans work in blown glass -- but increasingly (as the years pass and everyone tries everything), these are stereotypes rather than accurate summations of racial habits.
Larger statues are less common and are quite expensive. Rulers raise monuments to themselves or to commemorate battles (usually just those they consider glorious victories), and temples often feature statues (either three-dimensional holy symbols or non-human divine servant creatures, the equivalent of Christian ‘angels’). Statues of the deity are usually large and dramatic, and unless they’re part of the shape of the temple building, tend to be inside the building, dominating the main area of worship (usually towering over the altar).

Single figures (or a single figure with smaller ‘supplicants’ twined about its legs, or bodies of fallen around its feet, are far more common than tableaux of multiple figures, though there are occasional exceptions (usually scenes of princes or kings fighting monsters -- yes, the ‘Azoun battling the Devil Dragon’ (or at least its head, curving ‘up and over’ from behind to loom down from above the valiant king, jaws agape) pieces are starting to appear).
If you haven’t fallen asleep yet, all of this rambling brings me to the heart of your questions, asking after details of the “best” statue of Sune.
Now, this is a toughie, because there are lot of exquisitely beautiful depictions of Lady Firehair, some of them enspelled so as to seem to be flesh, and to have hair that’s literally on fire. Some of these statues are provocative, and some are VERY provocative (some are located in the very private chapels of wealthy worshippers, and their poses leave no doubt as ti the uses to which they’re put). There are also temple statues exaggerated in physical features in various ways -- and, like the beauty of real living females, personal preferences have a lot to do with what individual worshippers deem the ‘best.’

However, it’s GENERALLY thought among the faithful (the clergy themselves officially have no preferences, always stating something along the lines of ‘personal mind-contact with the Goddess so eclipses everything else that these feeble reminders can be to us no more than that’) that the forty-foot-tall altar-statue of Sune at the House of Rapture temple in Nyth (presided over by High Ladyhostess Loumrae Darszuauntra, a CG female human Clr14 of Sune) is the best.
Known as ‘the Lady Rapturous,’ it depicts the goddess with her right hand raised to her own lips, its fingers in her mouth, and her left hand just rising from her thighs (the bottom of the piece, which is legless). Her torso is twisted, emphasizing the shape of her breasts, her arms are long, graceful, and posed as if captured in a moment of moving with great force, and her head is thrown back, her eyes half-closed, and her hair clinging to her “like the clawing hands of a hundred feverish lechers,” as one pilgrim (Asgrum of Iriaebor, writing a decade ago) put it.

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Originally posted by Ed Greenwood (via THO), Candlekeep, Ask Ed '04, 24 Oct 2004

I’m afraid no one is reckoned “the greatest artist in Faerun.” The Realms simply lack the easy travel and flows of information that our modern-day real world enjoys. Not only are tastes broken up by races and faiths, few sages have seen non-mobile art in more than their own immediate area, and have the time and coin to magically peer at more distant areas in an organized, ‘miss nothing’ manner.
So art appreciation is left to those who can afford it: wealthy (often noble or royal) patrons, who commission what THEY want to see (or, having been entranced by something an artist did, want more of). Quite often the pieces they cause to be produced are for their own private enjoyment, to be shared only with select visitors and friends. Nobody is ‘keeping score’ as to greatness of achievement except within localized areas (Waterdeep, its environs as far afield as Secomber, and the places in Amn and Tethyr that Waterdhavian nobles and wealthy would-be nobles ‘winter over,’ is one such area; Silverymoon and the rest of the Silver Marches is another, and so on), and among such patrons, many artists enjoy only the brief popularity of ‘passing fashion.’
I can tell you that in Amn right now, the painter Albristaun (known for his large, grand, ‘flattering’ portraits of nobles) is popular, as is the ‘wall painter’ Malaharkos, who’s much given to sensual depictions of dancing winged women, half-seen in misty blue moonlight, and has been hired to adorn many a tavern and highcoin-club wall.

The foremost sculptor is probably Hanthos ‘Bright Hammer,’ a dreamy, almost trance-trapped man of frenzied activity, who sometimes bursts into streams of profanity and vivid descriptions of things only he can see, is known for his exquisitely-detailed little (slightly taller than the length of a long-fingered human hand) statuettes of armor-wearing human males and females of, ah, ‘heroic proportions,’ who always have some hint of strangeness about them (such as a tiny tail, or beast-talons, or an extra arm, or a long, horse-shaped head).

However, there are those who prefer Alais the Dancer, a nimble, athletic, and quite beautiful young half-elf lady who climbs along her carvings as she leads a team of grim, close-mouthed dwarves in crafting larger-than-life grand stone tableaux of family elders depicting in moments of battle-heroism, outside manor gates or in the courtyards of patrons’ mansions. Her craftings are always handsome and strong of appearance, though they’re said to sometimes little resemble the people they’re supposed to represent.

As for your query about lines of “architecture and aesthetic sense” demarcation in the Heartlands and the North: aside from differences that arise from use of local building stone (different from place to place) and timber (or lack of same), and different cultures over the passage of much time (i.e. the fashion in Netheril differing from the styles of present-day Waterdeep), there aren’t a lot of clear differences based on geography.
The Sword Coast North and the Moonsea North have been so lightly and so recently settled, by comparison with other areas, that many human builders have ‘come from away’ and brought their styles and ways of building with them - - and the beleaguered dearves have tended to build whatever they’ve been hired to build, adding their own touches but cleaving to their own preferences only in their own building and delving.
Your view of local inhabitants ‘growing away’ from each other is quite correct, but the influence of trade and migrations (especially those displacements forced by orc hordes and wars) has caused most places to have a hodgepodge of architectural styles.
There are exceptions, such as Silverymoon - - but many of these exceptions, Silverymoon being a prime example, are attempts to recapture the glory of previous times and societies, and tend to deliberately copy the architecture of those long-ago places. Climate dictates many differences between a hot, sunbaked southern city and a cold, wet northern city, yes, but quite often there’s no ‘look’ of the sort you’re envisioning, that can let a scrying-crystal user tell at a glance, “Ah, I must be looking at somewhere in Thay” or: “Thesk, beyond a doubt.”

There are architectural DETAILS (downspouts, roof-tile patterns, carved adornments) that betray realm or region, yes, but I haven’t the time or space here to start listing such things, sorry. I will toss out artistic tidbits from time to time, though, now that you’ve demonstrated the interest exists.

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Originally posted by AJA


As Ed (understates) below, it's a big topic. Two replies I have from him glancing on the topic;

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Originally posted by Ed Greenwood (via THO), Candlekeep, Ask Ed '04, 18 Oct 2004

I’ve never really had the opportunity to properly explore painting, sculpture, and music of the Realms in detail, in print thus far.
It’s a big topic, from the humble wind-chimes (stones, bones, and shells hung on rawhide thongs across many a farmstead doorway or window, to tell of trespass or rising breezes) to the elaborate ‘song-cycles’ with silent acting of scenes in the background (bards sing and play in foreground, occasionally pointing at the actors and commenting on the dramatic scenes from the past or the invented romance that are being acted out, though the actors never speak) favoured in the most ‘civilized’ human cities. Elves always dance (often using magic so they can ‘fly’ and so engage in aerial ballets), and their actors always sing and orate. Dwarves and gnomes rarely dance, and their actors tend to unison-chant (plainsong) and orate. Halflings try just about anything, as do human minstrels doing broad comedy. And so on.

Illusions and magic are mistrusted by most common folk, so the most they’re used in dramatic arts are wizards using illusions to provide animated ‘you are there’ scenes of important battles and events to audiences at feasts and formal gatherings (with forewarning, to avoid upset or violence), or the illusions of spell effects at dramatic moments in a play.

The wealthiest nobles sometimes purchase paintings that have minor illusions cast on them suggesting motion (hair of person stirring occasionally in unseen winds, a smile that comes and goes, the gaze of the depicted person moving about, small gestures), but again, most people regard these as “creepy” and want nothing to do with them. Most nobles commission these to impress (and hint that the paintings harbour more formidable defensive magics, so would-be thieves and other intruders had best beware).
Most folk buy paintings as portraits of places they’d visited, such as Waterdeep (yes, as “I’ve been there” souvenirs!), remembrances of realms they had to leave behind (usually birthplaces); portraits of monarchs they revere; holy events (usually mortals receiving divine aid or rapture rather than actual depictions of deities) of faiths they follow; or people they know (parents, more remote ancestors, loved ones, or selves). Pictures of people are sometimes painted as plaques (palm-sized slate or wood carry-arounds, either carried wrapped or fitted with little ‘doors’ like many a modern real-world dartboard), but are usually life-sized, shoulders-up pictures hung on walls in the best rooms of domiciles or guild offices. Most curio shops in Waterdeep have an assortment of ‘portraits of dead nobodies’ hung up for sale, and yes, there’s a brisk trade in portraits of scantily-clad female beauties, often mounted ‘on the back’ of a family portrait so the thing can be hastily turned around when Aunt Oskaula comes to call.
Most guild offices have the symbol of the guild (guild, coster, and family badges and full heraldic displays are the most popular ‘expensive art,’ by the way) hung up on the wall as a painted wooden carving, a portrait or portraits of the founder(s) of the guild, prominent past (long dead and famous in their field) guild members, and present and past guildmasters. A few guilds have begun to demonstrate their wealth in a way increasingly adopted by ‘wannabe-noble’ rich merchants (but thus far, sneeringly dismissed by ‘real’ nobles, at least in Waterdeep): they’ve purchased ‘waiting-room’ paintings, usually of guild-related elements (smiths would have anvils, forgehammers, tongs, and so on), that are ‘everchanging’ or ‘living.’ These terms are, of course, misnomers: what such paintings (typically large dark square pieces) really do is to display the same sequence of painted elements over and over.

To use the smiths’ example: a fire kindles and seems to ‘grow’ out of the painting, tongs and a bar of metal can be seen thrusting into it, and then the flames fade to reveal an anvil looming up. As it ‘drifts’ forward dramatically, the now-glowing bar is lowered onto it, a forgehammer smashes down on it twice, the scattering sparks wash away anvil and bar to leave just the mighty hammer (backlit by forge-glow). We see it slowly rise and fall, emphasizing the force with which it is wielded, and then it fades to reveal a tiny tumbling object that comes ‘out of the distance’ towards us, growing rapidly in size. We see that it’s a horseshoe, and then it dwindles again, back into flames that become the kindling fire (and the cycle repeats from there).
Such pictures are the latest fad, although some of them (like paintings of fires blazing in hearths) have actually been available for years. They’re very expensive, and it remains to be seen if they’ll really catch on outside of Waterdeep, Athkatla, and the largest cities of Sembia.

Which brings us to sculptures. As with paintings, abstract sculptures are almost unknown in human art (elven art often employs sweeping curves that suggest ocean waves but that incorporate elements that might be spreading branches, or straining wings). Statuettes, particularly small pieces no taller than the length of a human forearm, are quite common. Most are crude depictions of human heads, ‘severed’ orc heads (often with comical ‘bumpkin’ expressions rather than trying to look horrific), or full-body human figures (nude female dancers are popular, of course), and many are placed as finials atop fence-posts, gate-spires, and the like. In at least one place, Tharsult, statuettes have been used as money.
Many dwarves and gnomes dwelling in human cities spend their lives carving small stone statues for sale to folk desiring to ‘dress up’ their gardens or homes with either dramatic warriors (often passed off as ancestors) or, again, feminine beauty in various forms. Halflings more often carve in wood, and elf artisans work in blown glass -- but increasingly (as the years pass and everyone tries everything), these are stereotypes rather than accurate summations of racial habits.
Larger statues are less common and are quite expensive. Rulers raise monuments to themselves or to commemorate battles (usually just those they consider glorious victories), and temples often feature statues (either three-dimensional holy symbols or non-human divine servant creatures, the equivalent of Christian ‘angels’). Statues of the deity are usually large and dramatic, and unless they’re part of the shape of the temple building, tend to be inside the building, dominating the main area of worship (usually towering over the altar).

Single figures (or a single figure with smaller ‘supplicants’ twined about its legs, or bodies of fallen around its feet, are far more common than tableaux of multiple figures, though there are occasional exceptions (usually scenes of princes or kings fighting monsters -- yes, the ‘Azoun battling the Devil Dragon’ (or at least its head, curving ‘up and over’ from behind to loom down from above the valiant king, jaws agape) pieces are starting to appear).
If you haven’t fallen asleep yet, all of this rambling brings me to the heart of your questions, asking after details of the “best” statue of Sune.
Now, this is a toughie, because there are lot of exquisitely beautiful depictions of Lady Firehair, some of them enspelled so as to seem to be flesh, and to have hair that’s literally on fire. Some of these statues are provocative, and some are VERY provocative (some are located in the very private chapels of wealthy worshippers, and their poses leave no doubt as ti the uses to which they’re put). There are also temple statues exaggerated in physical features in various ways -- and, like the beauty of real living females, personal preferences have a lot to do with what individual worshippers deem the ‘best.’

However, it’s GENERALLY thought among the faithful (the clergy themselves officially have no preferences, always stating something along the lines of ‘personal mind-contact with the Goddess so eclipses everything else that these feeble reminders can be to us no more than that’) that the forty-foot-tall altar-statue of Sune at the House of Rapture temple in Nyth (presided over by High Ladyhostess Loumrae Darszuauntra, a CG female human Clr14 of Sune) is the best.
Known as ‘the Lady Rapturous,’ it depicts the goddess with her right hand raised to her own lips, its fingers in her mouth, and her left hand just rising from her thighs (the bottom of the piece, which is legless). Her torso is twisted, emphasizing the shape of her breasts, her arms are long, graceful, and posed as if captured in a moment of moving with great force, and her head is thrown back, her eyes half-closed, and her hair clinging to her “like the clawing hands of a hundred feverish lechers,” as one pilgrim (Asgrum of Iriaebor, writing a decade ago) put it.

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Originally posted by Ed Greenwood (via THO), Candlekeep, Ask Ed '04, 24 Oct 2004

I’m afraid no one is reckoned “the greatest artist in Faerun.” The Realms simply lack the easy travel and flows of information that our modern-day real world enjoys. Not only are tastes broken up by races and faiths, few sages have seen non-mobile art in more than their own immediate area, and have the time and coin to magically peer at more distant areas in an organized, ‘miss nothing’ manner.
So art appreciation is left to those who can afford it: wealthy (often noble or royal) patrons, who commission what THEY want to see (or, having been entranced by something an artist did, want more of). Quite often the pieces they cause to be produced are for their own private enjoyment, to be shared only with select visitors and friends. Nobody is ‘keeping score’ as to greatness of achievement except within localized areas (Waterdeep, its environs as far afield as Secomber, and the places in Amn and Tethyr that Waterdhavian nobles and wealthy would-be nobles ‘winter over,’ is one such area; Silverymoon and the rest of the Silver Marches is another, and so on), and among such patrons, many artists enjoy only the brief popularity of ‘passing fashion.’
I can tell you that in Amn right now, the painter Albristaun (known for his large, grand, ‘flattering’ portraits of nobles) is popular, as is the ‘wall painter’ Malaharkos, who’s much given to sensual depictions of dancing winged women, half-seen in misty blue moonlight, and has been hired to adorn many a tavern and highcoin-club wall.

The foremost sculptor is probably Hanthos ‘Bright Hammer,’ a dreamy, almost trance-trapped man of frenzied activity, who sometimes bursts into streams of profanity and vivid descriptions of things only he can see, is known for his exquisitely-detailed little (slightly taller than the length of a long-fingered human hand) statuettes of armor-wearing human males and females of, ah, ‘heroic proportions,’ who always have some hint of strangeness about them (such as a tiny tail, or beast-talons, or an extra arm, or a long, horse-shaped head).

However, there are those who prefer Alais the Dancer, a nimble, athletic, and quite beautiful young half-elf lady who climbs along her carvings as she leads a team of grim, close-mouthed dwarves in crafting larger-than-life grand stone tableaux of family elders depicting in moments of battle-heroism, outside manor gates or in the courtyards of patrons’ mansions. Her craftings are always handsome and strong of appearance, though they’re said to sometimes little resemble the people they’re supposed to represent.

As for your query about lines of “architecture and aesthetic sense” demarcation in the Heartlands and the North: aside from differences that arise from use of local building stone (different from place to place) and timber (or lack of same), and different cultures over the passage of much time (i.e. the fashion in Netheril differing from the styles of present-day Waterdeep), there aren’t a lot of clear differences based on geography.
The Sword Coast North and the Moonsea North have been so lightly and so recently settled, by comparison with other areas, that many human builders have ‘come from away’ and brought their styles and ways of building with them - - and the beleaguered dearves have tended to build whatever they’ve been hired to build, adding their own touches but cleaving to their own preferences only in their own building and delving.
Your view of local inhabitants ‘growing away’ from each other is quite correct, but the influence of trade and migrations (especially those displacements forced by orc hordes and wars) has caused most places to have a hodgepodge of architectural styles.
There are exceptions, such as Silverymoon - - but many of these exceptions, Silverymoon being a prime example, are attempts to recapture the glory of previous times and societies, and tend to deliberately copy the architecture of those long-ago places. Climate dictates many differences between a hot, sunbaked southern city and a cold, wet northern city, yes, but quite often there’s no ‘look’ of the sort you’re envisioning, that can let a scrying-crystal user tell at a glance, “Ah, I must be looking at somewhere in Thay” or: “Thesk, beyond a doubt.”

There are architectural DETAILS (downspouts, roof-tile patterns, carved adornments) that betray realm or region, yes, but I haven’t the time or space here to start listing such things, sorry. I will toss out artistic tidbits from time to time, though, now that you’ve demonstrated the interest exists.

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