Gedecoreerde kast van eikenhout in het stadhuis van Ieper, België before 1887

This is a page showing an oak cabinet from the town hall of Ypres, Belgium. Without a date or artist, it's tempting to see this as a simple piece of municipal furniture. But let's consider the message encoded in the image. Town halls in the medieval and early modern period were at the very center of civic life. They were a place to store valuable archives and treasures, and to conduct law. For an anonymous craftsman to produce a cabinet like this, he would have had to satisfy the leaders of the municipality, a group of powerful merchant families. The prominent display of such a work suggests a certain conservatism. As art historians, we can look to municipal records and guild documents to understand better the social conditions of the artist who made this. By studying the history of the institution of the town hall, we can better understand the image's meaning in its own time.