Mantlepiece Design with Mirror 1800 - 1900

Editor: Here we have an anonymous design for a "Mantlepiece Design with Mirror," from somewhere between 1800 and 1900, held here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It appears to be rendered in pencil and perhaps etching. What immediately strikes me is the sort of austere grandeur suggested in such a simple medium. What do you see in it? Curator: I see a reflection, quite literally, of the social hierarchies encoded in the very fabric of domestic space. This isn't merely a sketch of a mantlepiece; it's a blueprint for the performance of wealth and class. Consider the labor involved, even hypothetically. The extraction and preparation of materials like marble or fine wood, the carving, the placement of the mirror… Each stage necessitates skilled artisans, a network of laborers often unseen and unacknowledged, their effort essential for the aesthetic enjoyment of the privileged. Editor: So you're saying the drawing itself almost obscures the vast production network that the mantlepiece represents? Curator: Exactly. And further, what stories would this object 'see', reflected over its shiny surface? The rituals of wealth and power enacted in front of it? Whose reflections would grace its surface? Would the labourer ever appear in this mirror's reflection? Editor: That makes you think about how design can conceal as much as it reveals. Like the highly specific skills, like etching, employed in visualizing designs before widespread photography existed. Was the etching process meant to democratize or restrict access to architectural renderings, I wonder. Curator: Precisely. The printmaking processes allow for the dispersal of design and ideas across regions and workshops. How does that enable or disable craft and art? Editor: Looking at this drawing, I never really considered all the complex layers of labour. Thank you! Curator: My pleasure! Hopefully, from this drawing, we start considering design not in isolation, but in the context of how material goods mediate the social and economic world.