LONDON — Throughout history, ambitious monarchs, presidents, warlords, dictators, tyrants and just about anyone else who has devoted his or her life to the acquisition and exercise of power have known that one of the most effective ways of achieving that goal is to persuade other people to think of them as being powerful; but few rulers have executed this strategy as convincingly as the French king Louis XIV.
Every element of his life was painstakingly orchestrated by Louis himself and by his finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to appear so splendid and imposing that the awestruck French people would think of him not only as the world’s greatest living monarch, but as a historic figure of immense importance. Louis’s clothes, horses, hairstyles, weapons and even his nickname — le Roi Soleil, or the Sun King — were carefully chosen to create this impression, as were his magnificent palaces and the treasures inside them. France’s most accomplished craftsmen were commissioned to make sumptuous furniture, tapestries, carpets, cabinets, crystal and porcelain. Their work was renowned all over the world, particularly the tapestries designed for Louis by the French artist Charles Le Brun and the exquisite marquetry cabinets made for him by his favorite artisan, André-Charles Boulle.
Louis XIV is, of course, still regarded as one of history’s most powerful monarchs, but his patronage of gifted artisans like Boulle gives him a claim on another role as, arguably, the greatest champion of the decorative arts and craftsmanship. Decades after his death, the Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of the end of the golden age of the decorative arts, which have struggled to redefine their role ever since.
The struggle may be over. After more than 200 years in which the decorative arts and crafts have fought — and generally lost — the battle to stave off decline, both fields are enjoying a revival. Even Louis XIV’s favorite artisan is back in fashion. A highlight of an exhibition at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands devoted to the work of two young Dutch designers, Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel of Studio Job, is their reinterpretation of an ornate gilded bronze and marquetry wardrobe made by Boulle in 1700.
Boulle’s original wardrobe is exhibited at the Wallace Collection in London. The doors depict scenes from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” One shows Apollo, the Greek god of sun and music, as he pursues the nymph Daphne after falling passionately, but fruitlessly, in love with her. On the other, Apollo watches the satyr Marsyas being flayed alive after being defeated by him in a musical contest.Continue reading the main story
Studio Job’s riposte, the Robber Baron Cabinet, was designed and made in 2006 and 2007. It is a cast bronze cabinet in the same shape as Boulle’s, with fighter jets, missiles, bombs, machine guns and other modern symbols of power carved on the doors, rather than scenes from antiquity. The finishing touch is a gaping black hole in the middle that looks like the aftermath of a giant explosion inside. Like the other works by Studio Job in the show, which runs through March 4, the Robber Baron Cabinet is as intricately crafted as decorative arts pieces from the preindustrial age.
Other young designers share Studio Job’s passion for the decorative arts and crafts. Both fields were once considered to be taboo in design, which was steeped in the technocratic, rational culture of the modern movement for most of the last century. The seeds of rebellion were sown in the late 1970s when postmodernist designers, led by Alessandro Mendini and Ettore Sottsass in Italy, introduced craftsmanship to their work, partly to symbolize their rejection of modernist orthodoxy. Some of the early examples are featured in the “Postmodernism” retrospective running through Jan. 15 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. These experiments were continued by Hella Jongerius, Jurgen Bey and other Dutch designers who emerged in the mid-1990s as part of the Droog Design group. But the latest wave of young designers has embraced elements of the decorative arts on a larger scale.
The Italian designer Martino Gamper has produced ingenious collections of furniture that he has crafted himself, mostly from discarded chairs and cabinets, culminating in his recent exhibition at Galleria Franco Noero in Turin. His compatriots, Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi of Studio Formafantasma, have developed a series of domestic objects inspired by craft traditions they have discovered in Sicily. The work of their Dutch counterparts Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck of Atelier NL and Christien Meindertsma is influenced by the rural and agricultural cultures of the Netherlands, past and present. And the young British designer Peter Marigold constructs furniture from the windfall wood he finds on fields, parks, heaths and roads.
A parallel development has been the growing enthusiasm of the elite band of venerable manufacturers that produce finely crafted objects in contemporary design. Among them are: Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the Dutch ceramics maker that dates from the 16th century; Nymphenburg, which has made fine porcelain in Bavaria since the 18th century; and the 133-year-old Royal Leerdam Crystal in the Netherlands. All of these companies have developed formally and technically innovative pieces in collaboration with young designers like Pieke Bergmans, who has made beautiful crystal pieces at Leerdam.
This surge of interest ends decades in which the decorative arts and crafts tended to be dismissed as sentimental and old-fashioned compared with the dynamism of industry. These days industrialization is more likely to be seen as bland and soulless, especially as the deepening environmental crisis makes it impossible to ignore its dangers.
As a result, the idiosyncrasies, fragility and sensuality of craftsmanship have a new appeal, not only for designers, but also for the public, as illustrated by the success of the best-selling book “The Hare with Amber Eyes,” written by the British ceramicist Edmund de Waal. It tells the story of a tiny 17th-century Japanese netsuke, a replica hare carved from the ivory tusk of a Siberian mammoth, which he inherited from an uncle. By doing so, the book fulfills the dual role of tracing the history of the de Waal family and exploring the emotional importance of hand-crafted objects, including his ceramics, in our lives.
Equally influential is the impact of our growing use of digital technology, not only for communication, but information and entertainment. The American sociologist Richard Sennett argues in his 2008 book “The Craftsman” that the experience of immersing ourselves in digital technology and navigating random routes around the Internet makes us more amenable to things that seem equally quirky, instinctive and personal, rather than uniform and rational.
“The Craftsman” also calls for a redefinition of the traditional concept of craftsmanship to include new fields and different materials, including the virtual ones involved in the making of computer software. The outcome of such projects may seem far removed from the laborious process of making by hand, say, a ceramic bowl or a wooden cabinet by using specific materials and particular techniques, but the ritual of designing and making software is surprisingly similar.
Typically, software is designed and made by one person, who literally writes it out in the letters, numbers and symbols that create computer coding. Put like that, the experience of designing a brand new piece of software seems akin to that of André-Charles Boulle when he was crafting his magnificent marquetry cabinets for Louis XIV.Continue reading the main story