Two Alternate Designs for a Door Frame 1700 - 1780

Curator: This drawing, currently residing at The Met, presents two designs for a door frame; we believe it was created sometime between 1700 and 1780 by an anonymous artist. Editor: There’s a delicate asymmetry that draws my eye. Even as just a sketch, it exudes a whimsical formality – what an entrance that would make! It feels as if the lines themselves are dancing a baroque jig. Curator: Exactly! The artist teases that grand architectural style of the era. Notice the meticulous details in the ornamentation: the elaborate scrolls and that almost crown-like flourish at the very top. Editor: These architectural plans, designed as points of access or perhaps of visual transition, are intriguing if we see the domestic space of the eighteenth century as coded through the very act of permitting, of bordering…Who was afforded passage, welcome, safety? Curator: The designs each possess very different emotional weights: The right feels celebratory and outward-facing; The left seems almost secretive. I think the symmetry adds some seriousness. Editor: What is revealed versus what is obscured is key. Consider how these ornamental door frames both invite and guard based on the visual coding of class and gender expected (or unexpectedly embraced!) by inhabitants during this era. I'd be curious to unpack more on those tiny faces at the side too! Curator: It really makes you wonder who these doorframes were intended for. What kind of home, what kind of people… were these baroque dances built for? I keep imagining some sort of mischievous secret passageway on the left… Editor: This unassuming sketch allows for reflections on architecture not simply as structure, but also on architecture’s power to negotiate socio-political narratives related to identity, privilege, and power. So much concealed here through deceptively simple means!