Sep
24
Baroque Antiqies: Louis XIV Style
September 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Needless to say the furnishings of these buildings had to match
setting and once again it was Rome that led the way, this time in
scorative arts, particularl) furniture.
iggeration was the order of the day, in size, scale and proportion.
Jng was lavish and the Renaissance sense of proportion was often
scrollwork and mouldings. This was the furniture of the sculptor
Different styles of turned leg used on
wilh its large leafy scrolls, flower garlands, putti and human figures.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the 19th century’s derisive attitude to the
Baroque was that it was seen out of context. The furniture of this period
was designed exclusively for the room it was to occupy; take it away from
the painted ceilings and the richly hung walls and its ornateness and
massiveness become more obvious. Not all the furniture of the Italian
palaces was so designed, for the members of the household lived mainly
in smaller rooms above their large Baroque chambers. Here the furniture
was of the simpler type common in the 16th century.
As the 16th century progressed the Baroque revolution influenced
other Italian craftsmen including goldsmiths, metalworkers and glass-
workers. It was in France however that the Baroque was further ela-
borated into the Louis XIV style, an interpretation of Baroque that
spread to the rest of Europe in one degree or another.
The reign of Louis XIV, ‘Le Roi soled’, (1643-1717) was a period of
French pre-eminence in European history. An age of cultural and
political ascendancy for France, Louis’ reign saw the origins of an in-
fluence on international fashion that still lingers today. Paris replaced
Rome as the art centre of the world and French became the language of
European courts and diplomacy. The Louis XIV style in the decorative
arts was largely due to Louis himself for he believed that art should be
in the service of the king rather than the Church as it had been for cen-
turies past. Through his minister Colbert, Louis established academies to
standardize style in art. and the style he favoured was a dignified and
stately, but still sumptuous form of Baroque. The over-zealousness of
the Italians was refined into a new classicism.
In England it was not until after the Restoration in 1660 that Baroque
influences appeared. Before that date furniture had remained more or
less in the Elizabethan style and other arts and crafts had made little
progress for a quarter of a century.
A fuller expression of the Baroque only appeared in England with the
reign of William and Mary (1689-1702), after whom the style was named.
The Huguenot refugees from France after 1685 played a significant role
in the propagation of the Baroque, for many of them were skilled crafts-
men bringing with them French techniques and designs at a time when
the Louis XIV style was at the height of its fashion. The influences upon
English decorative arts were both French and Dutch. Dutch Baroque
was characterized by an element of realism which they introduced into
their art by their rejection of the old world peopled with angels and saints
and their acknowledgement of the new Dutch middle class in which the
artist worked not for a sole patron, but for the market.
The Baroque era followed the inspired humanism of the Renaissance
with inflated statements of pomp, power and splendour. During the 17th
century, the institutions of the Church in Italy, the state in France, and
all courts of Germany, spawned materialistic monuments to their
hjlglory in architecture and fine and decorative arts.
■ Italy, papal families such as the Barberini, Pamfili, Aldobrandini
anc Borghese constructed elaborate villas, and filled them with works
■ and expensive furnishings. At Versailles, the association of Louis
V with the sun-god Apollo required the development of an interior
setting not quite of this earth.
I lttiated by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Baroque architectural and
ntural style retained classical elements, but took liberties with
iciples of symmetry and restraint. Columns became twisted, sculp-
tured figures contorted, carvings expressive and exuberant. Baroque
inti nors achieved striking effects through a colourful welding together
irchitecture, sculpture, and painting, which dazzled the eye with
qdour and variety. Rising numbers of wealthy merchants, bankers
and Inewly-aristocratic families resulted in a refinement of rules of
etic uette and ceremony in order to define rank rigidly. The villas of
prii wes, cardinals and courtiers were replete with devices that filtered
anc arranged guests and residents to exclude those of lower rank from
the more intimate courtly gatherings. Private audiences were held in
cat sets and closets, small rooms richly decorated with fine furnishings,
hai stings, crystal, porcelain and paintings.
ink determined access to the ‘public’ levees and touchers of heads of
staM princes and nobility in state bedrooms, where elaborately hung
bee s were generally enclosed inside alcoves or behind ceremonial
bal istrades. Rank also determined the allocation of seats: ornate, gilded
throne chairs in Italy and elsewhere were reserved for heads of house-
hol i and state, and progressively less imposing chairs and stools were
use i according to social position. In Spain, ladies were relegated to floor
cus uons.
Franee, privileged women received in bed, and guests sat on cushions
in hie ruelle, or alley, beside them. Fixed positions of most furniture
pie as emphasized the formality of Baroque interiors. Chairs generally
line d room walls, and were put back in place there by servants after use.
I Mended to impress, these palatial interiors were lined with Turkish
tapestries, Genoese cut velvets, Lucchese silks and Spanish embossed
an< gilt leathers that were exported throughout Europe. Ceilings and
wa Is were painted with brilliant frescoes and self-glorifying messages
we e not uncommon. Gilding of ceiling panels and wall ornaments
bee une increasingly fashionable.
/. though still relatively scarce. Baroque furniture took on the pro-
cla c^tory aura of the pompous fittings around it. Carved sconces,
guerdons and chandeliers provided glittering supports for candles, and
the ij gilded surfaces were reflected in cascades of light by decorative
miirors in elaborate carved frames.
I % Italy, large villas such as the Ca’Rezzonico in Venice housed suites
of (late apartments, including galleries, libraries, dining rooms and
sal< ns, all decorated with hangings, gold galloons and fringes, lacquer-
wo k and ivory and marble wainscoting. The furnishings of these rooms
we e objects of sculpture and art, rather than comfort. Produced by lead-
ing contemporary artists, scale, exaggerated style and cost precluded
casual use. The private family apartments located above the show rooms
of the piano nobile were furnished very simply.
Baroque furniture was bold, vigorous and sculptural. Naturalistic
carving in high relief supported tables, beds, chairs, stools and cup-
boards, Carved dolphins, eagles, shells, putti and grotesques were
combined with volutes, dense scrolling and foliage, and placed beneath
seats or slabs of marble to form chairs or tables.
Gilded chairs with outstretching arms and velvet upholstery were
carved with broad, ribbon-like forms which twisted and furled to in-
corporate putti and foliage. Decorative console tables were carved by
sculptors such as the Venetian Andrea Brustolon (1662-1732) in vigorous
compositions of animals, blackamoors, shells and figures.
Brustolon’s training began in his native city of Belluno and was con-
tinued, from his fifteenth birthday, under the Genoese sculptor Filipo
Parodi whose late Baroque style no doubt influenced him. His earliest
known work is a pair of angels for the sacristy altar in the Frari, Venice,
probably about 1683 and it seems that much of his life was spent creating
religious works for church use. The only furniture that can definitely be
attributed to him is a suite, sometimes called the “negro suite’ which he
made for a prominent Venetian, Pietro Venier, sometime before 1699
and now in the Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice. The chairs of this suite are
carved in boxwood, and the arms are fashioned as creeper-entwined
branches supported by negros with lacquered heads and arms. The
largest piece is a side-table in which Hercules, flanked by Cerberus and
the Hydra, supports a platform on which two river gods lie holding por-
celain vases with three nude negros supporting yet another vase in the
centre of the table. Only two other suites can be tentatively assigned to
Brustolon, one made for the Correr family and now in Ca’ Rezzonico
and the other for the Pisani which can be seen in the Quirinal, Rome.
The collection of Lord Burnham in Beaconsfield holds four armchairs
similar to the Venier pieces.
Features of the Italian Baroque reached France during the reign of
Henri IV, who established craft workshops in the Grand Galerie du
Louvreon the example of the Florentine ducal manufactories. Aided by
cardinals Jules Mazarin and Armand Jean de Richelieu, who wished to
establish a national style, Louis XIII continued to promote the emula-
tion of Italian and Flemish achievement in the decorative arts.
In 1661 Louis XIV acceded to the throne, and in 1667 Jean Baptiste
Colbert, his minister of arts, founded the Manufacture Royale des
Meubles de la Couronne, known as the Gobelins after the workshops
previously established in 1622. Under the directorship of the artist
Charles le Brun, and stimulated by the personal interest extended by
Louis XIV, the Gobelins workshop developed into flourishing collabora-
tive manufactories, in which designs of le Brun, Jean Berain (1638-1711),
and Jean le Pautre (1618-82) were completed by craftsmen contributing
diverse skills and talents. Among the most prominent were Jacques
Caffieri (1678-1755) and Andre Charles Boulle (1672-1732).
Boulle is undoubtedly France’s most celebrated cabinetmaker and
his name has been internationally adopted to describe the style of furni-
ture produced in his workshops. In 1672, he was given rooms and a
shop in the Louvre by Louis XIV, where for the next thirty years
jade furniture for the Court and the nobility, receiving the title
ier ebeniste du roi. While he made a great deal of furniture for
VerMilles, only two fully documented pieces are known - a pair of
commodes made for the king’s bedroom at the Trianon. It is not certain
whether boulle actually invented the commode but he certain!) spent
son e time experimenting with the concept and played an important
role in its development. The original versions of the commode were not
the bureau but with fewer drawers which extended the whole
and sometimes provided with doors and the top in either mar-
or marble. While marquetry was fashionable at this time, it was
: who brought the technique to perfection. The technique involved
glueing together thin sheets of brass and tortoiseshcll and then pasting
on to the surface a piece ol paper on which the required pattern had been
drawn. I he pattern was cut out with a saw and the layers separated to
givel two kinds of marquetry, the first called premiere-partie in which the
pattern of brass was on a tortoiseshcll ground and the other, contre-
partie which was the reverse. His most magnificent achievement was the
cabinet of the Dauphin, completed between 1680-83, which was
iestroyed.
French Baroque incorporated the exuberance and lavishness of
designs, forms and ornamented carving into a more restrained
Classical style. Rectilinear gilt upholstered sofas, day-beds and
were made at the Gobelins along with other furnishings for the
ce at Versailles. Tall, imposing cabinets, bureaux, and commodes
were covered with floral marquetry, or the delicate interlacing composi-
tions of contrasting toitoiscshell and brass popularized by boulle’s
craftsmanship. Heavy ormolu mounts of mythological scenes,
s, lions and acanthus leaves appeared on tables and case pieces,
i Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and the great reductions
)belins’ output which the government imposed for economic
is, forced many craftsmen to leave France. Thedesigns of Huguenot
te Daniel Marot (1663-1752) proved especially important in the
lination of the Louis XIV style.
Sep
15
WINE-GLASS - CONE BEAKER IN GREEN-TINTED GLASS WITH TRAILED DECORATION - SMALL HEXAGONAL HOT TIE IN CLEAR, COLOURLESS GLASS WITH OPAQUE WHITE APPLIED THREADS
September 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment
WINE-GLASS DESIGNED BY STEPHAN RATH
Lobmcyr, Austria, 1954. Ht. 185 mm (725 in.)
JUG
Steuben Glass Works, U.S.A. 1966.
Ht. f.250 mm (985 in.)
For more than a hundred years the name
of Lobmeyr in Austria has been associated
with the production of quality glass. A
tradition of conservatism in their approach
to glass was maintained by Ludwig Lob-
meyr (1829-1917), resulting in a dignified
classical style, particularly for engraved
decoration. When Stephan Rath joined the
company there came a re-orientation
towards the contemporary Viennese style
of the early 20th century. Josef Hoffmann
and Michael Powolny of the Wiener
Kunstgewerbeschule, who both designed
for Lobmeyr, had already contributed to
this movement. Grace of form and good
proportion have characterised Lobmeyr
pieces to the present day, and are to be
seen in the wine-glass illustrated, designed
by Stephan Rath, so reminiscent of classi-
cal Venetian glass. Rath’s branch of the
firm, named ‘J. & L. Lobmeyrs Neffe
Stephan Rath’, prospered and the new
Lobmeyr glass was enthusiastically re-
ceived in Paris in 1925. They continued to
make glass in the same style until 1945,
when the connection with the Bohemian
glass industry was severed.
In 1932 Robert J. Leavy, production
manager of the Steuben Glass Works of
Corning, New York, developed a new
crystal that brought a higher standard for
American clear glass. He created a trans-
parent metal, heavy and fat, softly toned,
and with a distinctly individual character,
which became the basis for the new art
production of the factory. Under the aegis
of Arthur Amory Houghton jun., the
architect John Montcith Gates and the
sculptor Sidney Waugh produced some
fine engraved pieces. In 1936 a Design
Department was established, with George
Thompson as leader. The glass is seen to
advantage both in soft furnace-worked
shapes and with engraved work. Great
artists from many countries including
France, Britain, America, Asia and the
Near East, have been asked to submit
designs for the engraving of Steuben glass,
and in 1961 a number of distinguished
American poets were asked to submit
poems which could provide themes for
designs in crystal.
The Glass-makers
Skill
FLASK IN GREEN GLASS WITH ‘SNAKE THREAD’
DECORATION
Cologne, 3rd century a.l). lit. 200 mm (70 in.)
(See also colour photograph 6)
From earliest times glass-makers have sought
to improve a simple glass vessel shape by
adding extra decoration. The skilled crafts-
man learnt to exploit the natural ductile
qualities of glass to embellish his creations
still further. He could draw out threads of
glass and lay them as decoration on the
heated body surface of the vessel. Similarly,
he could drop ‘blobs’ of hot glass on to a
heated vessel, sometimes impressing them
with a moulded pattern. The indrawn and
outdrawn hollow ‘prunls’ on the North
European ‘Claw Beakers’ and ‘Daumen-
glascr’ were skilled developments of blob
decoration. More sophisticated techniques,
such as filigree and millefiori work, drama-
tically illustrate the expertise that the glass-
maker eventually attained in creating addi-
tional decoration.
Trailing: From the appearance of the first
vessels, glass-makers have never been able
to resist the temptation to add to the
intricacy of an object by trailing hot
threads of glass onto its surface. The
Romans were particularly fond of a trailing
which rested on the main body of the
vessel and was not marvered-in. Glasses
decorated with trailed threads can be
found anywhere in the Empire, and so-
called ’snake thread’ decoration distin-
guishes a particular group within this type.
Snake-thread or snake-trailed vessels were
produced mainly in Cologne glass-houses
in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and the
beginning of the 4th century A.D. They
bear applied decoration in the form of
threads, usually with a notched design, in
irregular winding patterns, sometimes in
spirals, and occasionally with ivy motifs
and other Germanic symbols. The most
famous piece of snake-thread decoration
is the pilgrim’s bottle known as the Meister-
stiick in the Rbmisch-Germanisches Mu-
seum in Cologne.
Adding: The Glass-maker’s Skill
Unguentarium in greenish glass with trailed
decoration
Syria, ird 6ih century A.D. Hi. 140 mm (55 in.)
For trailing, a lump of softened glass is
readily drawn out into a thread which may
be wound upon and attached to the surface
of a heated vessel. At first the Roman
glass-makers used the technique for quite
modest decoration of their vessels. Later
Roman glass tends to be wild, extravagant
and irregular in form, and this was
reflected in the use made of trailed
decoration. Elaborately tooled handles,
forms distorted with the use of tongs and
pincers, and trails ‘dribbled’ on the surface
appear towards the 3rd century A.D.
Towards the 4th century A.D., the Roman
glass-makers became even more technic-
ally daring, creating tiers of tall loops for
handles, and geometric lacings that stood
away from the main body of the vessel,
sometimes virtually obscuring the simple
blown forms they decorated. A case in
point is the fairly commonplace green
glass unguentarium illustrated, which is
nearly covered with trailing.
BOWL IN GREENISH Gl ASS WITH III i I TRAHJiD
DECORATION, INCLUDING SIX HANDLES
Probably Syrian, 41I1 or 5th century A.D.
Ht. 146 mm (575 in.)
There was great technical accomplishment
in most of the later Roman glass, except
for the preparation of the metal. By the end
of the 4th century A.D. the glass tended to
be impure and full of bubbles. The glass
forms themselves had lost their earlier
almost monumental character and were
remarkable for their freedom and grace.
Great play was made with the trailing-on
of handles. The earlier Roman strap
handle was joined by the multi-looped
handles of Syria, a striking form of handle
(3rd century A.D.) made of two, threads
joined at intervals, often called the ‘chain
handle’, and other multiple types. The
six-handled bowl illustrated has the han-
dles, applied thread on the neck and zigzag
on the body all in blue glass, and is a well-
known shape used in Roman glass-making
of the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. The
bowl has a certain charm, although the
workmanship is no longer exact.
Adding: The Glass-maker’s Skill
CONE BEAKER IN GREEN-TINTED GLASS WITH
TRAILED DECORATION
Pound in Kempston, Bedfordshire, England, second
half of ihe 5th century A.D.
III. 262 mm (1035 in.)
In the period following the break-up of the
Roman Empire, from the 5th century
A.D., the art of glass-making rapidly-
declined, perhaps never to recover in
England until the 15th century, when the
Renaissance gave a new impetus to the
luxury arts. In Merovingian or Frankish
times (f.5th-8th centuries A.D.), Euro-
pean glass was characterised by its imper-
fect greenish material, full of striations and
bubbles. The only Roman decorative
methods that survived were trailing and
mould-blowing. Trailing particularly was
used with as much dexterity in Merovin-
gian times as in Roman times. On the cone
beaker illustrated a 22-fold horizontal
spiral trail has been applied to the upper
part of the glass, running upwards from a
‘drop-on’ at the bottom. On the lower part
of the vessel a 12-fold continuous vertical
looped trail has been applied with great
skill. These Teutonic drinking glasses
were characterised by the absence of a
practicable foot.
SMALL HEXAGONAL HOT TIE IN CLEAR, COLOURLESS
GLASS WITH OPAQUE WHITE APPLIED THREADS
Venice, Italy, i6lh century A.D.
The Venetian glass-makers were highly-
skilled in every technique, including the
ornamentation of glass by trailing, and
they used this on its own, or in conjunction
with other techniques. Venice was already
exporting her glass to other European
countries by the 14th century A.D. The
Renaissance gave the Venetian glass in-
dustry a new inspiration and impetus,
which established Venice as the greatest
glass-making centre of that time. Though
a monopoly of the industry was sought by
Venice, Venetian traditions were spread by
her runaway craftsmen in many parts of
Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Trailed decoration can be seen on many of
these European products ‘a la j’acon de
Venise’. For example, trailed laltimo (opa-
que white glass) decoration appears on a
German glass of the 16th century; spiral
trailing is used on the bowl of a Nether-
landish glass of the same period, and
English glass attributed to the Italian
glass-maker Verzelini carries trailed lal-
timo decoration.