Pierre Fourfault and the Lennoxlove Toilet Service

• Autores: Michèle Bimbenet-Privat
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 139, Nº 1126, 1997, págs. 11-16
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Nothing now survives of the sumptuous silver furnishings made by the silversmiths of the Louvre and Gobelins manufactories during the reign of Louis XIV: the tables, gueridons, orange-tubs, torcheres, display stands and balustrades, as well as the mirrors of Venetian glass framed in gold or silver- gilt, all disappeared into the furnaces ofthe royal mint during the first meltings ordered by Louis XIV in 1689 and 1690 to finance the war of the League of Augsburg. Those silver objects of this period that have survived therefore tend to be modest vessels or items isolated from middle-class, bourgeois or noble decorative schemes, and cannot even begin to give an idea of the coherence achieved by a consistent use of the same material and a unified style of decoration in royal silver furnishings. These included not only the meubles meublans that is to say beds, tables and chairs, sconces, lamps and can- delabra - but also sets of table-ware including canteens vessels and plates, as well as writing instruments (desks, inkwells, sand-sprinklers) and toilet services.