Maybe I was swayed by some comments my grandmother once made, but I used to think lounging around on the furniture for hours at a time was mainly a 20th-century habit.
[Louis XIV-style chaise lounge via Bonhams]
It's easy to forget that roughly 400 years ago the French were innovating chic pieces designed for reclining. A few years back, I enjoyed
a talk given by the lively French professor and author
Joan DeJean. One of her major areas of interest is Europe's longest reigning king (to date), Louis XIV (1638-1715), and she explained how he positioned France as the international arbiter of all things luxe and high style (the recent Chanel Resort
show at
Versailles is an example of how his power still reverberates).
[Carolina Herrera, Jr.'s estancia photographed by Francois Halard, American Vogue Living,
fall/winter 2008]
In the book I've been reading this week, a review copy of
Fashion beyond Versailles: Consumption and Design in Seventeenth-Century France, Auburn University history professor Donna J. Bohanan explores the same period but she is specifically interested in the shopping habits and tastes of elite French women and men living far from Paris, particularly in the southern province of Dauphiné.
And although Bohanan states up front that her book is intended to be a social history ("a book about what things can tell us about the lives and lifestyles of their owners"), not a history of the decorative arts, she nonetheless describes many objects in detail. Artist Teresa Rodriguez's interpretations of period furnishings are a nice bonus, too.
[Curator Jacqueline Jacque's now highly coveted exhibition catalogue from a recent
Extensive postmortem household inventories, required by law in France during the 17th and 18th centuries, give us a sense of just how busy French upholsterers were (the volume of slipcovers is a little staggering), how many sets of chairs French provencials bought, and what the must-have pieces were (Turkish rugs, paintings, lacquered Asian-inspired cabinets, clocks, impressive beds bedecked with harmonizing textiles, softly-cushioned modern chaise lounges, and pairs, pairs and more pairs). We also learn who could afford to embrace ever-changing color trends -- from rich reds and greens to blues to lighter, brighter shades such as citron, yellow, and pink with green.
[Below, a detail of a fragment of a 17th-century Anatolian rug from the
Turk ve Islam Eserleri Museum in Istanbul, via Hali spring 2007]
More than the direct influence exerted by the Sun King, Bohanan is concerned with the power of fashion, the desire to be in style, and the impact of abundant engravings and magazines such as
Le Mercure. She writes:
"What was fashionable and state of the art in Paris captured the hearts and minds, and soon the purses, of provincial nobles, connoting a closer relationship between center and periphery than historians of grain prices and market integration have maintained -- this because consumption of decorative items has little to do with traditional market forces of supply and demand."
[Garniture -- all the rage in Bohanon's findings. I recently spotted this five-piece set
over at Ceylon et Cie.]
[Dick Dumas's 1980s (or 70s?) four-poster bed made from plumbing pipes and covered with Manuel Canovas fabric, as seen in Pierre Deux's French Country.]
Interior decoration is referenced in some way throughout the entire book; after all, architecture and decoration were (and clearly still are) such powerful ways of expressing one's identity. In subcategories, though, Bohanan delves into: comfort, convenience, and innovation in furniture and lighting; color, regularite, and the French preoccupation with matched sets; luxury; taste and politics; and dining and sociability.
[Ann Mashburn, a self-described Francophile, with husband Sid. The bed hanging is a much more minimal descendant of the elaborate hangings which evolved throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
The images I've included here may seem incongruous. Why not stick with 17th-century antiques (with period-appropriate upholstery), period-inspired rooms, quintessentially French interiors, or at least more than one house that actually is in France? With the exception of
les indiennes -- the Indian cottons which were very much in vogue centuries ago -- my contemporary choices don't reflect the more opulent textiles and objects Bohanan describes. Inspired by her book, I thought it would be interesting to show how elements and trends favored by the privileged provincials (pairs, lavish use of one fabric) endure today in less likely places far beyond the borders of France and are sometimes even embraced by mix-happy Anglophiles, myself included.
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