Renaissance Interior Design

History of Art and Interior Design

Walls

• Paneling reaches from floor to ceiling
• Intarsia in decorations
• Cartouche

Windows and Doors

• Square-headed windows were usual
• Doors set in deep reveals

Fireplace

• Strong focal points of a room
• Highly ornamented with sculptural reliefs
• Mantel was the most decorative feature in the room

Ceilings

• Flat ceilings with exposed beams and girders

Stairways

• Spiral, straight, and dogleg flights

Furniture Elements

• Chairs had thronelike backs, straight arms
• Chairs had turned, spiral, or baluster legs with bun or Flemish scroll feet
• Motifs: olive, laurel, or acanthus leaves, foliated scrolls, rosettes, cartouche, medallions, shells, chimera, griffins, caryatids, grotesques, gadrooning
• Furniture joints were concealed

Furniture Types

• Stool/Tabouret
• Escabelle

Other

• Caquetoire: From caqueter ("to chat"), woman's chair had trapezoidal form standing on four legs
• Armoire: Italian form of double cabinet for linen or clothes
• Commode: Chest of drawers

Commode en Tambeau

• Tambour-shaped commode

Lit d'ange ("Angel's Bed")

• A bed with a tester but no posts
• The tester floats like an "angel" over the bed

Cabinet on Stands

French Regency

• The term regency loosely described the transition period from the height style of Louis XIV to the feminine style of Louis XV
• When Louis XIV died, Philippe d'Orleans acted as regent for Louis XV
• The craze for chinoiserie was responsible for much of the character of the Regency and Louis XV styles

Furniture Elements

• For chairs, the heavy rectangular back of the Baroque combined with cabriole legs

French Rococo

• Reign of Louis XV
• Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress and France's most outstanding patron of the arts

Interiors

• Planned with intimate special-purpose rooms
• Pastel-painted panels with curved moldings replaced the marble and stucco walls of the previous era
• Pastoral or mythological scenes, decorative chinoiseries, and/or Rococo ornamentation in low relief, often gilded, were placed asymmetrically within the panel
• Wallpapers were popularized by the middle class, and flocked papers imported from England
• Parquet floor was covered with patterned carpets in soft colors
• Fireplaces were often ornamented with Irumean or overmantle, combined paneling, mirror, and painted ornamentation

Guild System for Craftsmen

• Ebeniste: Maker of veneered furniture
• Menuisier: Maker of solid wood furniture
• Fondeur: Maker of metal mounts
• Ciseleur: Maker of bronze chasing
• Vernisseur: Lacquerer
• Marqueteur: Maker of marquetry panel
• Doreur: Gilder

Furniture Types

• Fauteuil: Armchair with pierced arm
• Bergere: Lounge chair with full arm
• Coupé: Small, two-seat sofa with an exposed frame
• Marquise: Completely upholstered small sofa similar to a wide seat or a wide bergere; a seat for two people
• Voyeuse: A straddle chair, in which the sitter faced the chair back and rested his arms on the upholstered top rail
• Cabriolet: A small chair with a concave back and cabriole legs

Furniture

• Lit de repos: A daybed, was the chaise lounge, an upholstered chair with a long seat for reclining
• Duchesse-brisée: Two upholstered chairs put together and connected in the middle with an ottoman between them
• Confidente: Three seats to a single unit, with the two end seats smaller and separated by arms from the center section
• Console table: A table fixed to a wall with its top supported by consoles or front legs
• Table de chevet: Bedside table
• Table coiffeuse: The dressing table with drawers that opened to reveal a mirror

Design Pieces

• Rolltop desk (bureau a cylinder)
• Bureau Du Roi (King's Desk): Took nine years to finish
• Commode: A low chest of drawers, the most typical
• Eincsignure: A corner cupboard mainly built into the room
• Armoire: Continued to be used for clothing storage
• Secretaries: Writing cabinets with drawers hidden by the writing surface

Bonheur-du-jour

• A small light lady's writing desk with a central drawer in front, tiered shelves and cupboards in the back, and sometimes shelves between the legs

Accessory

• Glass mirrors
• Sèvres: Porcelain vases, portrait busts, Celadon vases from China, and Vincennes-Soft paste figurines and serving pieces
• Mantle clocks in exotic animal shapes

French Neoclassic

• Under the reign of Louis XVI, there was a revived interest in classicism with the excavation of the ruins of Herculaneum in 1738
• George Jacob founded a dynasty of cabinetmakers during this time
• Henri Riesener, a Parisian cabinetmaker and student of Oeben, designed many pieces for Marie Antoinette

Interiors

• Interior architecture and furnishings are the most important aspects of the Neoclassical style
• Proportions were light and refined, retaining intimacy and charm, but with an emphasis on straight lines and geometric forms
• Ovals, ellipses, and circles, which were usually segmental, were the only curves used
• Wide and narrow panels of painted wood or plaster covered with rich fabrics or wallpaper or filled with mirrors or paintings, were symmetrically arranged
• Slim panels on the walls, called boiseries, (carved woodwork picked out in gilt) were popular
• Doors and windows had rectangular or elliptical panels over them and were symmetrically arranged, with flatter more austere moldings, such as the egg and dart
• The trumeau (overdoor or overpaneling filled with paintings or mirrors) were frequently seen
• Color prints and paintings were popular
• Ceilings were usually flat and decorated with simple classical motifs, with a large glass chandelier in the center
• Rooms with high ceilings had an entablature crowning the paneling, rooms with low ceilings had a simple comice or a cove

Furniture Elements

• Manchettes (padded armrests): The arms ended in a volute or hoop back (the latter had up-rights and top rail in one continuous arch)
• Legs were rectilinear, game (a pedestal leg which tapers towards the bottom), fluted, turned, and quiver-shaped, or spindle-shaped and fluted
• Numerous innovations appeared, such as dining tables, combination secretary and chest-of-drawers, cylinder desks, mechanical furniture, and furniture with metal tops
• Motifs were derived from Greek sources and from nature: classical orders, fruit, flowers, laurel wreaths, garlands, ribbons and bow-knots, mythological scenes, shepherds and shepherdesses, caryatids, trophies, hunting and music symbols, arabesques, running motifs such as guilloche, beads, leaf bands

Furniture Types

• Fauteuil: with a square or medallion back that did not extend to the seat rail; Often slightly concave
• Dressoir or sideboard: storage piece for display holding food or plate; literally "dressing the food"
• Credence

French Baroque

• The first of the purely native styles
• During the reign of Louis XIV, France's Golden Age
• Andre Charles Boulle appointed master cabinetmaker to Louis XIV

Interiors

• Rooms in enfilade arrangement from public to more private spaces
• Salone - (a living room or parlor), means a conversational gathering
• Suites at each end
• Apartment
  • Antechamber
  • Chamber
  • Cabinet
• State bedchamber bed set off by curtains and columns
• Variety of interior spaces
• Vertical perspectives resulting from the light and dark contrasts in the staircase
• The rooms had massive proportion, and walls, ceilings, ornamentation were coordinated with the furnishings
• Furniture was still placed next to the wall because most activities took place while people were standing
• Colors were rich and vivid, and some of the combinations were violet and red, silver and gold, or red and green
• Large plate glass mirrors were used, and imported Chinese wallcover covered the walls
• Fireplace - ornamented with cartouche, swags, scrolls, and various classical ornaments
• Ceilings
  • contours varied: flat, barrel-vaulted, dome-vaulted, and with a cove from wall to ceiling
  • Painting, fresco, and stucco
  • Encouragement of vistas and the distinctive variation of ceiling configuration
• Doors and window trim was architecturally treated with a heavy molding, crowned with a comice
• Floors were wood parquet or black and white marble
• Crystal or carved wood chandelier in the center room with additional wall torcheres
• Accessories include: busts, hanging