Day 355 - Rose-colored chairs

 

May 3, 2024

It's  a bit strange to be back in the museum after so long an absence. I pick up a new map of the museum, but I need a helpful guard to guide me to gallery 514, the first of my "make-up" destinations on this go-around. 

The gallery turns out to be the "tapestry room " from what a Wikipedia picture shows me is a very grand 18th-century manor in Worcestershire, Croome Court.  The placard says that it was designed by Robert Adam, but I’m initially not sure whether the “it” in question was the house, the room, or both.  (I subsequently learn that it's the room.)  The house and its surrounding park are still in existence and are operated by the National Trust. I'd love to visit it, although I gather that the tapestry room, which the Met acquired in 1955,  was its chief glory.  Actually, in the early 20th century, the house's owner, the ninth Earl of Coventry, sold off the tapestries and seating to a French dealer. I guess he needed the money, or maybe tastes changed.

The space is very large, perhaps 45 feet long and 35 feet wide. Along one of the long walls, two large windows frame a mirror; at the center of the opposite wall is a fireplace, its marble mantel adorned with a rectangular inlay of lapis lazuli. Tapestries whose predominant color is rose line all four walls, and at first I'm astonished that they are tapestries at all -  they are so well fitted between the cornices  and the wainscoting that they might be paintings. Cartouches in the centers of the short-wall tapestries depict figures from Greek and Roman mythology. A border of flowering plans and birds decorates the bottom of the tapestries that line three of the four walls. 

Again, the room is very dark, but I realize (finally!) that brighter light might fade the fabrics. Still, the feeling of the room isn’t oppressive, in part because of the cream-colored wainscoting and ceiling, in part because the mirror and the frames of the furniture (most notably, two settees, a commode, and six armchairs) are all gilded and gleam in the small spotlights that, along with small electric bulbs in the candelabras, provide some illumination. 

The six armchairs, two of which are shown, are a special delight. they are of the same rose background color as the tapestries, each with a floral design. But what’s remarkable is that each of the designs is subtly different from the others. You could look at them for a very long time trying to discern these differences.

While England was an island nation, those with wealth could clearly import talent. The tapestries and the fabric used to upholster the settees and chairs were designed by French designers and woven at the Gobelins Manufactory.

One thing that isn’t clear to me is how the room was used. Was it primarily a private or a public space? I assume the latter, since it seems intended to evoke admiration . It certainly succeeds, 

I am not unhappy to discover, that galleries 517-519 no longer appear on the museum map. Perhaps the opening of the British galleries required a new numbering system.