Fill in the blank

photo from: interiors inside out
Vanity Olympia by Nika Zupanc

To proceed with filling in the blank...

 sit before the table.

Picasso Girl before the Mirror

What is a face really? 

Its own photo? 

Its makeup? 

Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter?

That which is in front? 

Inside? 

Behind? 

And the rest? 

Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? 

Deformations simply do not exist.

 Pablo Picasso

Solstice: a gathering in Paris

photos: credits at the end of post

Tree of Light

oxidized and waxed walnut, metal, gold and silver threads

A moment of union – an exchange in an atmosphere of quiet – has been carefully carved, painstakingly molded, and lovingly woven by Anne and Vincent Corbière at the gallery, Salon H.

The husband and wife duo, cabinetmaker and weaver each in the highest traditions of their respective arts, has created one of the most poetic moments in their careers. Convoking us in a ring around a Tree of Light,  we find stools, the most primitive of furnishing elements. The exhibit called “Solstice,” evokes the time of the year when diminishing light has become all the more precious. The pagan notions of the sacred - circle, tree, light - are expressed with great craftsmanship in the most contemporary fashion. A beautiful and living reminder that what is most important in life never really changes, that furniture can be art and convey emotion.

M42 

Blackened steel, 

upholstery silk bayadère stripes on a ground of gold threads

ETA ORI 

Patinated steel, 

upholstery of freestyle weave of silk stripes with a glint of silver

MEISSA 

Carved chestnut, textile woven with printed vinyl yarns

Solstice can be seen at Salon H until Tuesday, January 20th.

Salon H, is not just a gallery. 
Located in the narrow streets of 6^th arrondissement, 

it's founders,Yaël Halberthal and Philippe Zagouri, have formed a salon for the 21^st century. Here meet artists, writers, performers - creating events of dynamic and intelligent exchange 
designed for this very intimate and particular space.

           photos courtesy of Salon H and Bruno Suet

Fairytale Furniture

The Bo Reudler product and interior design studio is based in the Netherlands.

"We are storytellers through matter. We love materials: following their hidden qualities to bring out their natural beauty, experimenting to discover things we could have never thought of. We love the immaterial: charging things with imagination and meaning."

Above, elements from the Haute Bamboo series made in collaboration with bamboo-architect Olav Bruin.

These are elements of the Slow White Collection of

handmade, limited edition furniture. They are made from gathered wood (beech, birch, cherry or oak), recycled timber, white linseed-oil paint.

This bathroom in a 19th century home near Amsterdam was completely renovated by Reudler.

The Narcisse mirror from the Asylum Collection is made from glass of varying thicknesses causing a distorted reflection resembling a pool of water. A Slow White wash-table, coated with glossy white paint, was especially designed for the room. The sink is made of copper.

 

"The experience of water extends beyond the act of bathing. Sitting in the bathtub looking up, the bather becomes entranced by a ceiling of intersecting plasterwork circles, as if the water were dripping upwards from the bath. "

 Frost and condensation inspired the bathroom window design, entitled Summer Frost.  A sandblasted pattern starts out dense at the bottom to provide privacy and becomes more open at the top. The scene   depicts butterflies and dragonflies in a landscape of ice flowers. "By day the pattern is reflected on the walls resembling sunlight filtered through foliage, by night the scene is illuminated to become an abstract image."

Bo Reudler Studio



Lionize

door knocker Avignon

"Some 2500 years ago, a Greek artist conceived the strange idea of putting a movable ring into the mouth of a lion, or rather of combining two traditional elements, an artistic and a utilitarian one, by uniting a lion protome with a swinging handle.

image: ferlosio

 "The new art form, once created, lived on everywhere and became almost immortal. It would never have been so successful if its appeal had been so simple that it could be expressed in a short formula. As in every 'success story' there were many contributory factors and ambiguity played a considerable part. The figure of the lion was the traditional guardian of the dwelling and belongings of the living and the dead. Human pride could find immense satisfaction in imposing on the fiercest of beasts a most menial task. And in addition, a playful element slipped in. The homo ludens made the lion into a performing animal, frightened by it and at the same time showing superiority over it."

Lion Masks with Rings in the West and the East

Otto Kurz

carved lions in Paris

Our guardians, our protectors, our pets.

Inside and outside, we have tried to tame the beast. Even without a ring in his mouth, the idea is just

about the same.

image: touregypt

Egyptian chair with lion feet

image: Pierre Bergé et Associés

Ceramic stool formed from four sphinxes with their lion feet as its base, enamel seat decorated with military figures and a goose. Dating from 1900, it was inspired by an Egyptian or Greek antiquity.

Renaissance table Musée des beaux-arts de Tours

image: Pierre Bergé et Associés

Oak chair featuring back carved with a lion holding a shield. Seat and legs sculpted to imitate fur and with feet ending in lion paws. Provenance and date not stated.

curio: oak furiture remnant

                                        

oak floor lamp

Napoléon III oval rosewood dining table

Animal elements, especially relating to lions,  have been prominent throughout furniture history 

--but  seem to be accumulating only recently in my own home.

photo: Lion d'or of Rocamador

To look at the subject from another point of view, if you ever wondered why so many hotels were named

au lion d'or throughout France, it's simple:

au lit on dort.

This playful message signaled to the weary traveler where he could find sleep at last in a near-by inn.



photo: rita bucheit ltd

Empire bed of mahogany attributed to Jacob

In bed we sleep.



L'Escalier de cristal: Beauty and decency

photo Le style et la matière

The widow Désarnaud (née Rosalie Charpentier) was the owner of the renowned boutique in the galerie de Valois of the Palais Royal named A l'Escalier de Cristal.  She opened the shop in 1802 as marchand-éditeur after the death of her husband and went on to influence the taste of her day. There she specialized in objets of great technical and aesthetic innovation, many composed entirely of crystal and gold plated bronze. What the previous century had done incorporating porcelaine into objects and furnishings, Mme Désarnaud-Charpentier did with crystal in the 19th. Very few crystal furnishings
have come down to us today.

photo Le style et la matière

This innovative table de toilette , donated to the Louvre by Claude Ott and Maurice Segoura in 1989, once belonged to the Duchess de Berry, daughter-in-law of Charles X. It was designed in 1819 by Nicolas-Henry Jacob, student of David, and received a gold medal at the Exposition des Produits de l'industrie. Entirely made of bronze and crystal, with the exception of a beech seat frame, the back of the armchair presents the shape of a lyre. The glass table top rests on four cornucopia and two balusters and is mounted by a duel-faced mirror flanked by two three-branched candelabra held by figures of Flora and Zephir. The drawer contains a musical mechanism whose melody is released, as a text specified at the time,

"pendant une heure: c'est-à-dire, pendant l'espace de temps qu'une jolie femme peut décemment passer devant une glace, en presence d'elle-meme.
for a duration of one hour: which is to say, for the amount of time a pretty woman may decently spend before a mirror in her own presence." *

La Duchesse de Berry by Thomas Lawrence

As of 1822,  it seems the mirror framed the graceful features of the duchesse de Berry whenever she sojourned at her country residence, the château at Rosny-sur-Seine. The Duchess, enthusiastic patron of the decorative arts, was forced to give up her scintillating accomplice in beauty after the fall of Charles X in 1836.

photo Le style et la matière

On display today at the Musée du Louvre, the looking-glass, having forever lost the melodious exchanges à deux with its mistress, stares out in mute indifference at art objects and on-lookers alike, admired for itself now rather than consulted.

* Chefs-d'oeuvre d'ebenisterie, le mobilier du Louvre by Daniel Alcouffe et al.

-see also Persée for another aspect of A l'escalier de cristal

My Anthropomorphic Loves

Matisse

The Inhabited Silence of Houses

Every once and again when I'm alone at home and all is quiet, I slip off into a sort of 

pulsating atmosphere, where the Things around me beg for attention in a different way.

It's a bit like Disney's Beauty and the Beast,

without the singing and dancing and without the shiny faces.

The furniture seems to motion to me with its extreme stillness. It moans and whispers. Floors creak, armoires adjust themselves with little pops, a drawer opens with a baritone grate. There's a humming in the air.

 My cleaning lady tells me that she says "Bonjour, Maison!" when no one is in. So maybe I'm not alone in feeling a presence --- or maybe crackpots have a way of  finding one another. (A different cleaning lady identified more with another fairy tale. She saw herself as Snow White,  a beneficent presence who worked her magic by cleaning and putting everything right in the house. A lovely image. Unfortunately, her zeal was such that she scrubbed the paint right off the doors with very abrasive lessive St. Marc.)

Don't get me wrong, I don't talk to my furniture, I listen to it.  I do think we can communue with it in  moments of silence for our mutual benefit.

Gaudi

Calvet chair

Furnishings don't have to have a particular shape to make their presence felt at quiet moments, but some do exaggerate the point with their design, vying for attention among the more common lot.

How would you feel about sharing your home with this chair? You couldn't be lonely. You can tell me that you don't like Gaudi, but really, how could you dislike this little guy? Why, he's just stretching out his arms for affection!

Gaudi said, "Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator."  Could that be the secret?

 

There are furnishings that incorporate the gimmicks of human form as with this Ultra-meuble by Kurt Seligmann or the chair in this Castaing bathroom.

I don't think they have as much personality as pieces whose animate quality is more abstract -- though they are a kick !

*

Then some furniture is scary at night. My son was afraid of an enormous Ile-de-France armoire that loomed in his bedroom when he was a toddler. It may not have helped that we referred to it as le monstre because of its size, but I don't think we used that term in front of him. I used to have moments of fright when alone in the house for an hour or two as a child. I was sure the antiques my parents collected released their spirits when my parents closed the door.

R.W. Symonds and R. Luytens

It may just be me, but some furniture has more expressiveness than others suggesting a face, a pose, a movement. Does anyone else see a be-whiskered face here? I'm sure this chest of drawers contains many unspoken secrets. These smooth rectilinear surfaces prove that a living quality doesn't have to come out of organically inspired forms...

plaster lamp

Giacometti for Jean Michel Frank

but it often does.

Writhing forms and idiosyncrasies  aside, any furniture can speak to us. The most important thing is probably the vibration of one thing set off by another.

And quiet.

Shhhhh...

Getting personal...

Some pieces of furniture are not only particular but have real personalities to contend with ! Do you ever look over at a table and wonder if it might just do a little jig or notice an armchair and some how not truly feel alone ? It is a terribly anthropomorphic view, but what follows is a small sampling of some of the characters I have met.

table c.1700 photo LS Jaulmes

table mid 17th century chateau de Chenonceau

armchair beginning 18th, Italian photo Dupuis et Verdier

side chair by van der Velde 1895

slipper chair by Leleu c.1940

armchair Pipe by Jasper Morrison 2009