The Furniture History Society Newsletter 214 May 2019 In this issue: A South German Drawing for a Cupboard with Auricular Carving for the Rijksmuseum | Society News | A Tribute | Future Society Events | Occasional and Overseas Visits | Other Notices | Book Reviews | Reports on the Society’s Events | Publications | Grants A South German Drawing for a Cupboard with Auricular Carving for the Rijksmuseum hen a group from the Furniture contribution to the Rijksmuseum’s WHistory Society visited Amsterdam in Decorative Art Fund. Fittingly, this has July 2018 on the occasion of the exhibition been deployed towards the purchase of a ‘Kwab, Dutch Design in the Age of German drawing showing a cupboard with Rembrandt’ at the Rijksmuseum, they ‘kwab’, or rather Ohrmuschelstil, carvings. spent an afternoon in the museum’s print room studying a selection of drawings showing furniture designs. This was no self-evident part of the programme: until recently, the Rijksmuseum had no collection of drawn designs for the decorative arts to speak of, although some fine examples have long been kept among the general holdings of Old Master drawings. However, in order to remedy this situation as best as possible, in 2013 the Rijksmuseum Decorative Art Fund was established by private benefactors, with the express purpose of purchasing European design drawings from 1500–1900.1 Over the past six years, a considerable number have been acquired, and, although the collection is still in its infancy, it was possible to put together a display of about thirty-five furniture drawings, ranging from a late sixteenth-century Parisian design for a cupboard to some late nineteenth-century Fig. 1 Design for a two-door cupboard. German and French material, which Graphite, pen and brown ink, blue wash, sparked lively discussions among the 278 × 184 mm. Southern Germany, c. 1650– members of the Society. 75. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; purchased with support from the Furniture History During their visit, the Furniture History Society and the Decorative Art Society group very kindly made a generous Fund/Rijksmuseum Fonds 2 furniture history society newsletter, no. 214, may 2019 The Schrank has two doors, each one view. Its large carved masks are topped by carved with a pelican in its piety moulded sections, but it is not clear how underneath a large mask-shaped cartouche these terminate at their outer edges. Some framing a boy, who pours a liquid from a shaded parts towards the centre appear to jug. The cartouches, which are continued suggest the depth of these mouldings, but in the surrounds of the pelicans, are again fail to provide clarity, and other couched in bold auricular forms, among structural features of the cupboard are which masks figure prominently; this equally cursorily rendered. ornament is carried through on the central By contrast, the carved decoration is stile, the decoration along the top, and the convincingly depicted, albeit in rather lower rail, above the bulbous feet. naive fashion. It seems likely, therefore, The cupboard is reminiscent of the that the drawing was made by the sculptor designs by Friedrich Unteutsch, a Schreiner who was to execute it. He may have been or furniture-maker from Frankfurt am inspired by publications such as those by Main, published in Nuremberg around Unteutsch and Erasmus, but he may 1650 in his Neues Zieratenbuch .2 This has equally have been an agent himself in the remained the best-known book of designs stylistic evolution recorded in those in this manner, but there were others: publications. During the sixteenth and around 1670 , both Simon Cammermeir seventeenth centuries, the German- and Donath Horn published comparable speaking lands boasted no prominent Zieratenbücher in Nuremberg. 3 The architects or designers who took the lead drawing’s large-scale ornament, with its in ornamental inventions; many artists and preponderance of masks, is particularly craftsmen were between them responsible close to some designs in the Säulenbuch , or for a broad stylistic development, with book of columns, published by Georg countless local variations. 5 Unteutsch Caspar Erasmus in 1667 , again in himself, a craftsman working in Frankfurt, Nuremberg. 4 This proximity was noticed exemplifies this phenomenon. by a former owner of the sheet, perhaps a Rather than just a fashionable exercise, dealer, who has written Erasmus’s name the drawing is clearly a proposal for a on the back. particular piece of furniture, with its It is highly unlikely that Erasmus did in specific iconography. The fact that the fact produce the drawing, which entirely artist took the trouble to draw both doors, concentrates on the carved decoration. The which are each other’s mirror image, cupboard’s structure is presented in suggests that it is a presentation drawing, curiously inept fashion. How the section made to convince a patron to commission with the doors is meant to support the the piece; for practical use as a design, a pedimented top, or how it rests on the single door would have sufficed. base, which seems too wide, is not Nonetheless, the drawing does to some elucidated, and the depiction of the extent have the character of a design as extraordinary open pediment is well. There are passages where the artist unsatisfactory from a structural point of has tried out alternative solutions, which, furniture history society newsletter, no. 214, may 2019 3 as they did not please him, he pre-existing drawing, which sometimes subsequently attempted to obliterate served as a model for many years. 6 (clearly visible in the right-hand section of More or less complete runs of the pediment and the lower right-hand Meisterrisse are preserved from the cities of corner of the door to the right). Mainz, 7 Ingolstadt, 8 Bremen, 9 Oldenburg 10 With the exception of some rare and Brunswick, 11 and isolated examples documented pieces, the identity of the survive from a number of other towns. 12 artists responsible for the carved With the exception of the series at decoration of German seventeenth-century Ingolstadt, very few date from before the furniture (or, indeed, that of any other end of the seventeenth century. The nature country) is not known, and the drawing of the drawings varies significantly from will therefore almost certainly remain city to city, but they all present a piece of anonymous, although it may plausibly be furniture in a detailed frontal view, localized in southern Germany and dated proportioned according to a specific to about 1650 –75 . The attempt to link it architectural order. This is often with Erasmus’s name reflects the accompanied by a plan, and sometimes preoccupation with attributions that is also a side view that may incorporate shared by almost every student of constructional features. The drawings are drawings. Anonymous sheets receive scant usually signed and dated, and annotated attention, especially if through their artisan by the masters from the guild who quality any search for the artist’s identity is supervised the making of the trial piece. doomed to failure. Even published The Meisterrisse point to the central role catalogues of museum collections of played by the art of drawing in the drawings tend to exclude material of this training of furniture-makers in the kind. Judging from the available literature, German-speaking lands. Elsewhere, too, the design acquired by the Rijksmuseum furniture-makers must have acquired at would appear to be very rare, but least some ability to draw, but there is less comparable ones may lurk unheeded in evidence of this, and even beyond the museums, archives or private collections. collections of Meisterrisse , Germanic There does exist a type of drawing by furniture drawings seem to survive in German furniture-makers that has been greater numbers than those from fairly well published: the Meisterriss , or elsewhere. 13 drawing, which an aspiring furniture- As an example that was probably maker had to provide of the trial piece he connected with a commission, the drawing proposed to make in order to gain acquired by the Rijksmuseum provides admittance to the guild. This seems to information of a different kind than the have been obligatory in each city in the Meisterrisse ; it demonstrates the role German-speaking lands, unlike most other played by the carvers, who collaborated European countries. For example, in the with furniture-makers. A drawing of a northern and southern Netherlands trial Mainz Cantourgen , or writing desk, of pieces were apparently often made after a about 1760 does the same, but in a 4 furniture history society newsletter, no. 214, may 2019 Antwerp or eighteenth-century Amsterdam. It is all the more surprising that drawings by furniture-makers from these cities seem to be so rare. A coloured drawing of two drop-front secretaires, made in Paris by an artist called Baijer whose initials appear to read ‘J L Th’, shows a German at work in the French capital. He was probably related to the German- born ébéniste François Bayer, who was elected master in 1764 ; in the Residenz in Ansbach, there is a table attributed to this maker with a marquetry top for which a drawing by our Baijer survives. 14 Our Baijer almost certainly worked with the well-known ébéniste Roger Vandercruse, called Lacroix: another drawing by him, Fig. 2 Design for a writing desk. Pen and black ink, watercolour, 530 × 421 mm. also now in the Rijksmuseum, represents a Mainz, c. 1755 –70 . Rijksmuseum, drop-front secretaire, of which two Amsterdam; purchased with funds from the examples stamped by Vandercruse are Decorative Art Fund/Rijksmuseum Fonds known. 15 different way. With its plan and side-view, By acquiring as large and varied a it conforms to the Meisterrisse from that collection of design drawings as possible, city, but the draughtsman, presumably a the Rijksmuseum hopes to contribute to cabinet-maker, has here set himself the clarifying their role and importance in difficult task of showing the piece at an ways suggested in this short contribution.