Inventing Extravagance

European furniture from the 18th Century might not be initially interesting to you, but trust me on this one, it's absolutely fascinating.  I could spend weeks studying elaborate rococo and baroque furniture to my delight, but getting people to understand what I understand is a different challenge.

As a former docent at The Frick Collection, I studied craftsmen, Jean Henri Reisener, and Martin Carlin, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art introduced me to the most elaborate dynasty of furniture that I've ever seen.  Furniture that features many hidden drawers, lifting platforms, turning gears, levers that hide and pop-out at a push of a button.  All mechanised and all handmade.  Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens is perhaps one of the most influential and inspiring furniture exhibitions that I've ever seen in New York City.  

It's easy to perceive that such furniture has no relative meaning to the average person, but such elaborate configurations can give critical historical insights to the rituals and customs of royalty, aristocracy, and those who worked for such clients.  

Father and son, Abraham and David Roentgen, were trained cabinetmakers, whose work existed in a highly competitive industry of furniture making.  Europe had established advanced self-regulated networks of guilds and workshops that produced furniture that could never be reproduced today.  For example, the technique of gilding (with mercury) onto fixtures, is an internationally outlawed practice.
 

David Roentgen's Automaton of Marie Antoinette: