Papier-mâchè side chair

In 1840 Charles F. Bielefeld published in London a substantial volume with 128 plates under the comprehensive title Ornaments in Every Style of Design, Practically Applicable to the Decoration of the Interior of Domestic and Public Buildings . . . Manufactured in the Improved Papier Mâché.(1) Papier-mâché had been used for decorative objects and sculpture since early modern history.(2) However, experiments during the Industrial Revolution resulted in a composite material that rapidly gained in use.(3) Remarkably, although the main component of the technique is paper, increasingly ambitious objects, such as extensive interior decorations like brackets, moldings, and curtain holders, as well as furniture, including chairs, tables, and cabinets, were created.(4) One of the grandest works is a canopy bed that was given by Queen Mary to the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, London.(5) The juxtaposition of divergent materials with different surfaces, such as lacquer and light-reflecting mother-of-pearl, may recall earlier veneer work and Late Baroque Boulle marquetry. The technique was most popular during the Victorian period and the reign of Napoleon III. In the United States, famous manufacturers like Tiffany Studios emulated European production with their own inventions and also obliged a specific taste for painted variations in a Russian style. The physical lightness and airy appearance of the chairs were associated with the public rooms of upperclass homes in which hostesses and female guests would gather. They simultaneously exude a refined and disposable character. Easily moveable from a music room to a card-playing room, for example, these highly elegant chairs served a variety of purposes.

Catalogue entry from: Wolfram Koeppe. The Robert Lehman Collection. Decorative Arts, Vol. XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 249-50.


NOTES:
1. The publication is catalogued as On the Use of the Improved Papier-Mâché in Furniture, in the Interior Decoration of Buildings, and in Works of Art (published in 1840 with a new edition in 1850). See Metropolitan Museum, 1991.1073.226 (1840); and 30.48.8 (1850).
2. Fleming, John and Hugh Honour. The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts. London, 1989, pp. 606 – 7.
3. Berman, Avis. “Antiques: Papier-Mache.” Architectural Digest 44, no. 7 (July) 1987, pp. 108 – 13, 148; Matthews, F. L. and Rees D. Rawlings. Composite Materials: Engineering and Science. Boca Raton, Fla., and Cambridge, 1999.
4. The material is a mixture of pulped paper, clay, and plaster combined with glue. The surface must be smoothed, painted and varnished, or lacquered in layers. The Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a jewelry cabinet (1999.50.1), an étagère (1991.50.2), hand fans (1999.50.11,12), and a pair of ornamental vases (1999.50.8,9).
5. Toller, Jane. Papier-Mâché in Great Britain and America. London, 1962, pp. 80, 82, pl. 1. For the various chair types, see Toller 1962, pp. 75 – 77, pls. 12a – 13b; Bawden, Juliet. The Art and Craft of Papier Mâché. New York, 1990, pp. 12 – 15; Grandjean, Serge. “The Nineteenth Century: France.” In World Furniture: An Illustrated History, edited by Helena Hayward, pp. 232 – 46. New York, 1965, ill. no. 923, and Binet, Sylvie. Sieges français: Des origines a Napoléon III. Paris, 1976, pp. 80 – 81 (the form in ebonized wood with mother-of-pearl inlay that was fashionable under Napoleon III; Paris, ca. 1850); Butler, Joseph T. “The Nineteenth Century: America, 1815 –1918.” In World Furniture: An Illustrated History, edited by Helena Hayward, pp. 247 – 56. New York, 1965, especially ill. no. 973 (side chair of papier-mâché painted black and gold with caned-seat and inlaid mother-of-pearl; probably English, ca. 1850); Aronson, Joseph. Furniture in the Bob Jones University Collection. Greenville, S.C., 1976, no. 93; Rivers, Shayne and Nick Umney. Conservation of Furniture. Butterworth-Heinemann Series in Conservation and Museology. Oxford, 2003, pp. 205 – 6. For the conservation of similar objects, see Van der Reyden, Dianne and Don Williams. “The History, Technology, and Care of Papier-Mache: Case Study of the Conservation Treatment of a Victorian ‘Japan Ware’ Chair.” www.si.edu/mci/downloads/relact/papier_mache.pdf [accessed 4 May 2012] n.d. [after 1992]

Robert Lehman, New York