Twenty-two designs for the painted decoration of interiors 1830 - 1897

Curator: Immediately striking—a visual archive of elegance. What do you make of these renderings, considering they offer only preliminary form and substance? Editor: Well, considering the period, the inherent materiality is clear: etching on laid paper. It's interesting to think about who labored to create these designs, envisioning luxurious interiors for the wealthy elite. What would the production line of plasterers, painters, and artisans look like translating such vision? Curator: That's a fine question for socioeconomic critique. But structurally, look at the distribution of forms across the picture plane. Each isolated composition, while distinct, partakes in an overall balance of rectilinear shapes interjected with flowing organic curves. It speaks to the high level of symbolic unity aspired to during the late 19th century. Editor: Agreed, there’s the unity of ornamentation that speaks to an entire aesthetic economy. You’re reminding me of the relationship between these sketched ornamentations and the physical application. Think about how it alters in translation when plasterers and painters interpret the rendering... the nuances of their labour contributing as much to its creation as the design itself. Curator: It reminds one of the theoretical interplay between the signifier and the signified. Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise, responsible for these designs during the latter half of the 19th century, offers a visual encoding for spaces and places of luxury. Editor: Ultimately though, these drawings, housed here at the Metropolitan Museum, allow us to understand labour history: what it would cost and what it meant, what each step of making looks like through social strata involved. The evidence of physical, collaborative making processes... that, to me, remains the enduring relevance. Curator: A keen reminder of our interpretive potential and subjective agency. Editor: Precisely. We construct history with these artworks through their making as well as their conceptualisation.