Academic literature on the topic 'French House decoration'

In the 1855 edition of his guide to Pompeii, the French artist and archaeologist Ernest Breton begins a chapter on the city's houses and shops with a print showing tourists in a grand Pompeian residence (figure 1). At the rear of an atrium with an enormous impluvium, a man contemplates a raised garden while a well-dressed couple approaches from the right. Behind them, in the roofless remains of the house, the garden's ancient sculptural display remains in situ; animals and deities inhabit a landscape dominated by a shrine-like niche, a pool, and pillars painted with trees. Deep shadows and encroaching vegetation set a romantic, melancholic mood. This is the House of Marcus Lucretius (IX.3.5), excavated less than a decade prior and, at the time, one of the ancient city's most famous sights. As is typical of nineteenth-century illustrations of Pompeii, the size of the house is exaggerated: while the decorative scheme and arrangement of the rooms is accurate, the garden is too highly elevated and too large in proportion to the figures. The atrium's disproportionate impluvium is a complete fabrication, the actual impluvium having been dismantled in antiquity. Despite the artistic licence, Breton and his imagined tourists follow the same path as ancient visitors to the house, drawn toward the garden and its sculptures by the manipulation of space and decoration.

This paper examines a late medieval manuscript produced in northern France and Flanders for a member of the Scottish royal house: Edinburgh University Library, MS 195. The manuscript contains an ornate representation of the royal arms of Scotland, supported by two unicorns. It was commissioned for James III c. 1464–7. Despite its royal provenance, the manuscript has received limited scholarly attention. The text and illuminations are analysed in order to shed light on their origins and on the circumstances of their production. The manuscript is an important example of a continental work produced for Scottish royalty. By studying the text, heraldry, iconography and historical context of the manuscript, this paper provides new insights into the diplomatic relationship between James III, the French court and the continental manuscript trade. It also provides new solutions to old problems, such as the enigmatic letters ‘P’ and ‘L’ found in the border decoration.

Abstract: Françoise de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne repeatedly highlights a collection of Peruvian treasures. Graffigny's description of these objects, both when they are on display in Zilia's private room in a French convent and in the Temple du soleil in her country house at the end of the novel, invokes a vocabulary drawn from eighteenth-century French standards of stylish interior design and private collecting. Social status in eighteenth-century France was performative; demonstrating one's own good taste with the displays in a well-decorated room or a private collection communicated that one belonged to the elite. Graffigny's contemporaries would have recognized that the descriptions of the arrangement of the Peruvian objects affirms Zilia's social value—and also that of her would-be lover, the chevalier de Déterville. Déterville, disinherited so that his older brother could keep the family wealth intact, is not able to easily demonstrate his belonging. However, his curation of the Temple de soleil helps rehabilitate his social status, and, at the same time, further contributes to his control over Zilia. Paying attention to the ways in which the Peruvian objects are displayed in the context of contemporary interior decoration and private collections ultimately destabilizes the dominant feminist interpretation of Zilia's final independence.

The Sainte-Chapelle at Vic-le-Comte is one of the most important religious buildings surviving from the 16th century in the Auvergne. It was the last of ten French royal and ducal chapels founded, broadly following the precedent set by Louis IX’s foundation of the Parisian Sainte-Chapelle in 1248. The primary function of this, and the other Saintes-Chapelles, was to provide a dignified structure within which to house fragments of the Passion relics inherited from Louis IX. For their patrons, such foundations served as important public expressions of piety, advertised the patrons’ connections to the French crown, and simultaneously functioned as valuable diplomatic tools, encouraging important guests to venerate their relics. The Sainte-Chapelle at Vic-le-Comte has received limited scholarly attention, particularly in relation to its patron John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and his position as Regent of Scotland. This paper examines this foundation and its ambitious programme of decoration in relation to the aims and ambitions of its founder. The motivations behind the project are analysed in relation to Albany’s position in Scotland, his growing prominence in France, and his strengthening ties to the Florentine Medici family. Investigated in relation to other examples of his patronage, Albany’s foundation demonstrates how issues of ancient lineage, sacred kingship, and dynastic commemoration were of central importance.

This article dwells on the memorial services for Henry I, Duke of Guise, and Louis II, Cardinal of Guise, who were assassinated in Blois at the order of King Henry III of France. These services were special due to the arrangement of symbolic chapelles ardentes (‘burning chapels’) in the churches. The decoration of these chapels reflected not only the religious and political ideas of adherents of the Guise brothers, but also changes in religious art unrelated to the particular event. For instance, the prevalent motif of Calvary, which by the late 16th century had become common in the interiors of French churches following the decisions of the Council of Trent, as well as triumphal motifs that had been used to depict the ruling class throughout the 16th century and had fundamental importance in terms of the development of the ideas of the Renaissance and Gallicanism. The main visual sources used in the paper are engravings, both separate works (by Catholic engravers, primarily Jacques Lalouette’s work depicting in detail the Parisian chapelle ardente) and book illustrations, as well as descriptions of similar chapels whose images have not survived to the present day (e.g., Pierre Matthieu’s text describing the ceremony and the chapel in Lyon). Among other key motifs, besides Cavalry, we can name the imitation of Christ, as well as triumphal motifs in an antique manner, which are characteristic both of the court art during the period of the French religious wars in general, and of the House of Guise in particular.

The article deals with the English text space. The purpose of the study is to identify the specific features of the proxemic informative text structure of H. James’s The Portrait of a Lady. A new concept of “proxemic informative text structure” is introduced into text theory as a segment of text architectonics that describes the spatial parameters nominated by proxemes. Proxemes are considered as nominations of spatial parameters of the text. The typology of textual proxemes is specified and the existing proxemes-spacenаmes, proxemes-verbs of movement, proxemes-placenames, proxemes-landscape units are supplemented with such types of proxemes as a metaphorical landscape unit, an interior proxeme and a distant proxeme. The metaphorical landscape unit means a metaphorically marked proxeme that nominates a landscape description in the text. An interior proxeme is understood as a nomination of the interior decoration of a house. The interior proxeme revealed in the novel is a socio-cultural interior proxeme, interpreted as a socio-cultural informative construct in which two societies intersect: French, namely Parisian, and Spanish. A distant proxeme, i.e. a distant literary placename is understood as a proxeme that nominates a plot-textual reference to a location in which the described events do not occur at the moment when they are mentioned. Socio-cultural toponym-landscape unit is understood as a landscape nomination reflecting the socio-cultural aspect of the location. For the first time, bi-kernel proxemes were identified, which are constructs of a set of kernels of the same type and constructs of a set of kernels of different types. The bi-kernel feature of proxemes is one of the parameters of the specific features of the proxeme informative text structure in the work of H. James. Socio-culturally marked proxemic units, aligning various European cultural markers in the plot-thematic matrix of a work of fiction, are revealed in the proxemic informative text structure of H. James’s The Portrait of a Lady.

The Bibliotheca Wittockiana in Brussels houses an impressive array of bindings that shows the glories of this very special decorative art. The collection does not aim to be an exhaustive historical survey, but reflects the taste of one man, Michel Wittock, beginning with his early interest in 16th-century Italian bindings and later those of 19th-century France, and culminating in many beautiful examples of abstraction in French and Belgian bindings of the 20th century. These works are housed in a purpose-built 1980s building designed by Emmanuel de Callatay and extended 15 years later by Wittock’s architect son Charly, and are shared with an appreciative public in the museum’s reading room and through regular displays in the three large exhibition spaces.

The article concerns the final architectural and design activity of Hector Guimar (1867–1942), when he was forced to withdraw from his unique Guimar style. During this period, the sociopolitical and cultural life of Europe underwent fundamental changes. Bourgeois modernism was replaced by more laconic democratic styles (functionalism, constructivism, etc.). Not wanting to lose the professional orders, the French architect created projects with-out the former plastics and warmth. It is noted that before the World War II, he was mainly engaged in the design of multistorey residential buildings, occasionally, in decorative design of their facades and interiors, elements of technical equipment. His architectural projects of that period are residential complexes on Rue Jean de la Fontaine and Rue Agar (1910–1912), House Tremois on Rue François Millet (1909–1910), synagogue building Agoudas Hakehilos on Rue Pavee (1913–1914). Briefly considered the vicissitudes of his life after his departure to the United States (1938).

During the preparation of the new exhibition in the Museum of Tegea it was discovered that one composed fragment from a Protocorinthian aryballos with a complicated, figured representation, found during the excavations of the Norwegian Institute at Athens in the Sanctuary of Athena Alea in the 1990s, joined with another fragment found by the French excavation at the same site in the early 20th century. After the join, the interpretation of the scene must be completely changed. The aryballos has two narrative scenes in a decorative frieze: a fight between two unidentified men over a large vessel, and an unidentified myth involving the killing of a horse-like monster by two heroes, with the probable presence of Athena. Possibly this is an otherwise unknown episode from the cycle of the Argonauts, involving the Dioskouroi, perhaps also Jason and Medea. The aryballos was produced by an artist closely related to and slightly earlier than the so-called Huntsmen Painter; he was active in early Middle Protocorinthian II, and demonstrates a skill astonishing for this period in creating a many-figured and sophisticated, narrative composition.

The author reconsiders the commonly held notion that Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958) adumbrates a negative ‘critique’ of modern suburbia as a space of alienation. The functions given to architectural forms or elements of landscaping on the one hand can be distinguished from the comic uses of these forms onscreen on the other, for instance to satirise bourgeois habits or to reaffirm the prerogatives of childlike creative engagement with the built environment. The director strikes a balance between the mockery of conspicuous consumption and the enchantment of an unruly, unpredictable object world. Attention is paid the narrative of post-war French suburban development, the thunderous reception of Mon Oncle, and the peculiar approach that Tati and chief decorator Jacques Lagrange took to set design and the Arpel villa in particular, which overtly parodies interwar French high modernism. The villa’s stark opposition to the eponymous character’s ramshackle rooming house in suburban St. Maur allows Tati to elicit a specific audience response to shared values of spontaneity and disorder that modernizing tendencies in post-war France were in the process of destroying.

To either side of this main entranceway, on the street front, are fixed masonry seats. Such seats have been assumed to have been for waiting clients. However, in Pompeii these seats are not always in front of the largest and most elaborate houses, that is those whose occupants were likely to have had clients. They were therefore likely to have served as a public facility available to anyone, including the house occupants. No loose finds were reported from this entranceway. The only visible sign of possible post-eruption disturbance to the volcanic deposit is a small hole towards the south end of the east wall of this ‘atrium’. However, the hole seems too small to have been the breach made by a post-eruption intruder. Maiuri noted, that the wall decoration of this ‘atrium’ was of a fresh and well-preserved Fourth Style executed after the last transformation of the house. The pavement was in lavapesta. Fixtures here included a central catchment pool (impluvium), revetted in white marble that was damaged either before or during the eruption, and a lararium aedicula in the north-west corner. According to Maiuri, the aedicula was constructed after the last well-preserved wall decoration, but Ling believes they are contemporary. At least forty-five small bronze studs were found in the north-west corner of this area. These had decorated the wooden lattice of the aedicula, now reconstructed in plaster. All the other recorded moveable finds were from the south side of this space. These included: a household storage jar; two clay lamps; bronze and iron fittings, possibly from the closing system for room 8, the so-called ‘tablinum’; and bone fragments probably from a piece of furniture. In the south-west corner were found a large bronze basin and a bronze patera, both of which were conceivably associated with bathing. Contrary to what might be expected, no statuettes of Lares or other representations were found in the lararium aedicula. Maiuri therefore concluded that these must have been made of wood. If this were so, then the excavators, who were able to make a cast of the wooden latticing, would surely also have observed any statuettes inside the aedicula, objects which would seem to have been more important than the latticing.

The exhibition space of a Collector's House Museum, the specific case of the Ema Klabin House Museum (HMEK), offers the field of exhibition design a unique place for research due to its nature, which moves from the private to the public and presents artifacts that allow entering the biography of objects and understanding them from a material culture perspective. The present research, still in progress, has as a case study, the environment of the Dining Room at HMEK, which evokes, more than any other room, domesticity and the memory of home while at the same time convoking the experience of the museum space. The research proposes the centrality of the Dining Room both in the practices of the former residence and in the discursive elaboration of the current museum. In this context and in the proposal of this research, the study of the Dining Room, its materialities, uses and spatial organization in both historical moments is an exemplary case for the implementation of research in a house museum, serving its study, based on the indicated variables, to highlight possibilities in this type of institution based on its physicality. The former residence of collector, businesswoman and patron Ema Gordon Klabin houses a multicultural collection that encompasses visual arts, ethnographic objects, books, furniture and decorative arts, exhibited in preserved environments from a house register with exhibition design that highlights the practices of the house, collector and building of modernized classical architecture. It is considered that artifacts are memory supports, vectors capable of preserving or reviving them, provoking relationships between what has been experienced and the situations of the present time. The Dining Room, used for diplomatic and social purposes, is a space measuring 4.80m X 5.30m and connects to the social rooms of the house with a large glass door accessing the external patio, environment with tropical plants and an Italian fountain. It is accessed through a gallery - a must-see for visitors to the house and now, to the museum - and the living room. On the opposite wall, a camouflaged door accesses the kitchen and service areas – currently the museum's reception area – where the French service was carried out. Currently, the Dining Room is organized in accordance with photographs and other historical records that attest to its use before its change to museum status. It exhibits documents and objects that attest to the memory of the uses and customs of this space, for example, the Reception Book, in which the hostess described each event, her guests and the planning of the reception. The research proposes an understanding of the cultural trajectory of objects and the implication of design in the activation of private memories of a domestic environment that, by becoming a museological space, provokes collective memories through its exhibition design, investigating the application of design to address the feedback between experience and history.

The main recommendations of the panel report can be summarised under five key headings:  Building blocks: The ultimate aim should be to build rich, detailed and testable narratives situated within a European context, and addressing phenomena from the longue durée to the short-term over international to local scales. Chronological control is essential to this and effective dating strategies are required to enable generation-level analysis. The ‘serendipity factor’ of archaeological work must be enhanced by recognising and getting the most out of information-rich sites as they appear. o There is a pressing need to revisit the archives of excavated sites to extract more information from existing resources, notably through dating programmes targeted at regional sequences – the Western Isles Atlantic roundhouse sequence is an obvious target. o Many areas still lack anything beyond the baldest of settlement sequences, with little understanding of the relations between key site types. There is a need to get at least basic sequences from many more areas, either from sustained regional programmes or targeted sampling exercises. o Much of the methodologically innovative work and new insights have come from long-running research excavations. Such large-scale research projects are an important element in developing new approaches to the Iron Age.  Daily life and practice: There remains great potential to improve the understanding of people’s lives in the Iron Age through fresh approaches to, and integration of, existing and newly-excavated data. o House use. Rigorous analysis and innovative approaches, including experimental archaeology, should be employed to get the most out of the understanding of daily life through the strengths of the Scottish record, such as deposits within buildings, organic preservation and waterlogging. o Material culture. Artefact studies have the potential to be far more integral to understandings of Iron Age societies, both from the rich assemblages of the Atlantic area and less-rich lowland finds. Key areas of concern are basic studies of material groups (including the function of everyday items such as stone and bone tools, and the nature of craft processes – iron, copper alloy, bone/antler and shale offer particularly good evidence). Other key topics are: the role of ‘art’ and other forms of decoration and comparative approaches to assemblages to obtain synthetic views of the uses of material culture. o Field to feast. Subsistence practices are a core area of research essential to understanding past society, but different strands of evidence need to be more fully integrated, with a ‘field to feast’ approach, from production to consumption. The working of agricultural systems is poorly understood, from agricultural processes to cooking practices and cuisine: integrated work between different specialisms would assist greatly. There is a need for conceptual as well as practical perspectives – e.g. how were wild resources conceived? o Ritual practice. There has been valuable work in identifying depositional practices, such as deposition of animals or querns, which are thought to relate to house-based ritual practices, but there is great potential for further pattern-spotting, synthesis and interpretation. Iron Age Scotland: ScARF Panel Report v  Landscapes and regions:  Concepts of ‘region’ or ‘province’, and how they changed over time, need to be critically explored, because they are contentious, poorly defined and highly variable. What did Iron Age people see as their geographical horizons, and how did this change?  Attempts to understand the Iron Age landscape require improved, integrated survey methodologies, as existing approaches are inevitably partial.  Aspects of the landscape’s physical form and cover should be investigated more fully, in terms of vegetation (known only in outline over most of the country) and sea level change in key areas such as the firths of Moray and Forth.  Landscapes beyond settlement merit further work, e.g. the use of the landscape for deposition of objects or people, and what this tells us of contemporary perceptions and beliefs.  Concepts of inherited landscapes (how Iron Age communities saw and used this longlived land) and socal resilience to issues such as climate change should be explored more fully.  Reconstructing Iron Age societies. The changing structure of society over space and time in this period remains poorly understood. Researchers should interrogate the data for better and more explicitly-expressed understandings of social structures and relations between people.  The wider context: Researchers need to engage with the big questions of change on a European level (and beyond). Relationships with neighbouring areas (e.g. England, Ireland) and analogies from other areas (e.g. Scandinavia and the Low Countries) can help inform Scottish studies. Key big topics are: o The nature and effect of the introduction of iron. o The social processes lying behind evidence for movement and contact. o Parallels and differences in social processes and developments. o The changing nature of houses and households over this period, including the role of ‘substantial houses’, from crannogs to brochs, the development and role of complex architecture, and the shift away from roundhouses. o The chronology, nature and meaning of hillforts and other enclosed settlements. o Relationships with the Roman world