What educational tour is this?! Oh man I want to be there… It’s this kind of informational stuff I want & crave! My knowledge on antiques and the arts is so foreign based since everything American must be behind a paywall or something, or just doesn’t exist. Thank you for sharing this for us to see, so we can continue to learn and be simply fascinated to appreciate these rare beauties.
Absolutely fascinating. It really shows the craftsmanship and the level of detail that went into these exquisite pieces of furniture. They seem almost in pristine condition today. Absolutely extraordinary. I love the pieces that came from French Court including the little pieces belonging to Marie Antoinette.
As a cabinetmaker I would not call these pieces cabinets nor the person that made them could be called a cabinetmaker. This is highest art by a highly qualified artist.
As a cabinet maker and mainly an antique furniture restorer (30 years in Paris doing this kind of work) I will tell you that the French word is ébéniste. Never in proper ancient history have any craftsmen considered themselves as artists, and that would include Michelangelo himself. This is modern day sentimentality. It is also living proof that the crafts have so much disappeared that people no longer even have the notion of the work involved; they prefer to shroud it in mystery and romantic terms. The two persons above made several blunders. For example, Mrs. Jacobsen claims that "the pieces of veneer were stained after having been (scroll) cut". Wrong. They were ALWAYS stained before. The ingenious invention of A-C Boulle was to superpose the two main materials- tortoise shell and brass- and cut these simultaneously. Each material was inlaid into the other. To simplify, put a white sheet on top of a black one, and cut out a circle in the middle. You will be able to make two patterns: 1) a white square with a black circle, and 2) a black square with a white circle. Two for the price of one! Most ingenious. As Mr. Huber explained, "contrepartie" (or negative) was the one with mainly brass background- much, much less desirable than the coloured tortoise shell. This latter was coloured in all shades, from yellow, green, blue, black, and most especially red. The material itself doesn't naturally have these colours; they are obtained by floating strong earth pigments and dyes on sheets of hand made paper which are glued onto the furniture to be inlaid. Then the tortoise shell is glued (stained glue) on to the prepared parts. This material is scraped down very thinly and polished until it's translucid- only that allows the colour below to show through. I participated in a restoration of a frame for the Louvre Museum, and we were amazed to discover that it was gold leafed underneath. The colour was light green! Life is full of surprises. Up until the early nineties the world famous Faubourg St-Antoine (the equivalent of Tottenham Court Road in London) where Boulle himself was born, was a hubbub of incredibly high end intricate French furniture. There were several excellent copies of masterpieces made. I will even go so far as to say that in certain workshops we even fabricated antiques. I know, I did it! Nonetheless, we always bowed down to the old Masters, whom we still bear in our hearts.
Scandalus imposition of useless yet wearying sound track.Need taste and refinement be abased to elevator music , as if the contents of the video were incapable of assuring interest?
What a magnificent video! The way both Helen and Jûrgen described and explained Boulle´s fantastic technique was a pleasure. Thanks to the Colnaghi Foundation and the staff of the Wallace collection for making these videos. Unfortunately, I will never be able to visit the Wallace collection, therefore this is a real treat. I recommend to all fine furniture lovers Alexandre Pradere´s book "French Furniture Makers" published by Sotheby's
Well, not all the furniture. As the guide said : at the death of the king, his furniture were given to the "gentilshommes de la chambre du roi" and so removed from the palace.
