Day 185 - Desk in the Palais Paar room


September 5, 2019

Gallery 526 is another grand salon, this one from the Palais Paar in Vienna. The furnishings are all French - testimony to the widespread adoption of the Louis XV high rococo style among the European aristocracy (and perhaps the haute bourgeoisie as well) in the mid-18th century. 

When I peeked into this room yesterday, I noted optimistically that it has windows - frosted, to be sure, but ones that seem to back onto Central Park and admit natural light. My optimism turned out to be misplaced - this is yet another immense and dim space. The thought suddenly came to me, "This is what life was like back then - dark!" -- not in metaphorical but in literal terms. It makes you appreciate Edison's invention of the electric lightbulb all the more. 

Today's object is what the caption refers to as a writing table and filing cabinet - although for the life of me, I can't see where the filing cabinet is - maybe it's the glass-doored case on top.  About five feet long, it was made aaround 1770 by a French furniture maker of oak, tulipwood, casuarina wood, and kingwood veneer (some of these woods I've never heard of), and adorned with gilt bronze. I suppose I chose it because it's a desk, and because it has a place for books. It's the object in the room to which I can most relate.

I am, I confess, growing tired of the French 18th century. It seems so fussy, so foreign to the plainer, more clean-lined aesthetic I've admired since I was young. I wonder why this period had such great appeal for wealthy American collectors. And I suppose part of the answer is that these Americans sought to gain cachet and escape being considered parvenus in the cultural arena by buying up the material trappings of the cultured (or at least rich) aristocrats of a supremely materialistic era. But didn't the Americans realize that many of the people whose relics they purchased were guillotined because they were leeches on society?  When I see these furnishings, I have great sympathy for the sans-culottes!

At first I'm cheered by the thought that books are visible through the glass doors of the writing table's cabinet. It's nice to think of someone storing favorite books there. But then I see that all the volumes in the case have beautiful leather bindings. And I wonder, did Jayne Wrightsman, who donated the books,  purchase them just for show, or did she actually care about their contents?

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