Ornament was a divisive subject in the 20th century, rejected by the modern movement as a sign of decadence, while considered by traditionalists to be a lingua franca uniting the realms of architecture and decoration. This debate has since been pushed aside by architectural post-modernism and contemporary – and deliberately eclectic – interior decoration. Let us look back upon a notion that is as old as humanity itself.
Owen Jones's famous 19th Century The Grammar of Ornament.
© Creative Commons / Rawpixel
Fragment of a wall with hieroglyphs from the tomb of Seti I (reign c.1294 or 1290 - 1279 BC) - The British Museum © Creative Commons / Jeff Dahl
Photograph of animal paintings in the Lascaux cave © Creative Commons / Prof saxx
The Lascaux caves date back some twenty thousand years. In what would come to be considered one of the jewels of prehistoric art, humans painted on the walls and ceilings, creating image after image of animals, aurochs, deer, bison, even humans. There is a fine line between art and ornament, as has been demonstrated over the centuries, but if we presume that the purpose of these frescoes was to embellish the premises, they are some of the ancestors of ornamentation.
Egyptian antiquity from the Louvre Museum © Creative Commons / Guillaume Blanchard Alias Aoineko
Throughout antiquity, several ornamental languages fed off one another, morphing and expanding based on changing fashions, at times naturalistic, at other times geometric. Ornaments, while often religious in ancient Egypt, incorporating such things as scarabs or the Eye of Horus, would soon become geometric in the most distant times of ancient Greece, with meanders – Greek keys – forming friezes, and many other details that can be found to this day in Western ornamentation. Of course, palmettes, egg-and-dart designs, foliage, Acanthus leaves, and the entire classical Greek – and then Roman – repertoire would follow, establishing the European ornament standard for centuries, the legacy of which is alive and well today.
Papyrus of Hunefer © The Trustees of the British Museum
Scrolls at the top of this marble cornice from the high altar at Pergamon, Hellenistic period, 2nd century BC © Creative Commons / Marcus Cyron
But let us fast-forward to the modern era by skimming over the Middle Ages, which were nevertheless rich in ornamental history, from the Merovingian kings to the cathedral builders to the interactions with the Arab-Muslim world and its ornamental language in Spain and Palestine, to arrive at the advent of France under the Bourbon dynasty. In 1589, the enthroning of Henry IV marked the end of the Wars of Religion and the beginning of a period of prosperity in France.
Scrolls from the Saint-Jean portal of Rouen Cathedral, Early Gothic, 12th century © Creative Commons / Giogo
Mosaic border of acanthus spirals and animals, from the Via Panisperna in Rome, late 2nd - early 1st century B.C., once used to decorate the basin of a Roman bath, Centrale Montemartini, Rome, © Carole Raddato, Butko / Flickr2Commons
With ornament’s having become secularized, no longer confined to religious motifs, and the arrival of cabinetmakers from the German States and Flanders in Paris’s Faubourg Saint-Antoine, a distinctive French style developed in décor, ornament, and furniture. Under Henry IV and Louis XIII, mythological scenes and stories taken from fashionable precious books appeared in ornament, and boiserie progressed for cabinet-building. But it was under Louis XIV that the French style came fully into its own, setting itself apart from the Italian trends that had, until then, been inspiring architectural creations.
Louis XIV-style marquetry and gilded bronzes with delicate scrolls, by André-Charles Boulle. © The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982 / THE MET
Commode, André-Charles Boulle © The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982 / THE MET
Louis XIV’s reign was marked by repeated revolts of the high aristocracy, as were his childhood and the reigns of his predecessors, and he had to contain that group by drawing it to the court, preventing it from going back out into the provinces to stir up trouble. The royal castles, and soon Versailles, thereby became enduring living and reception premises, requiring grandiose interior décor and amenities: The king had to display his power – not only to his nobles, but to Europe as a whole. At every turn, the ornamental repertoire revolved around antiquity, war, and mythology. The radiant figure of the sun represented the king, the fleur-de-lys became iconic, warrior attributes contributed to the legend of a young, pugnacious, grandiose king.
Ornament drawing © Rinck
But the languages of ornament paralleled the tastes of the time and, at the start of the following reign, the nobility was weary of the weightiness of the late reign of Louis XIV. Its members wanted frivolity and fun and the libertines set the trends of the day. The Regency and then Louis XV styles saw the appearance of the rocaille style, marking the separation between interior decoration and major exterior arts: Palms, bat wings, and seashells became omnipresent in the repertoire. Facade architecture and interior design each came to have their own philosophy and logic, further reinforced by the new preference for smaller, lighter pieces. Asymmetrical details and graceful impressions came to prevail over massive, imposing decorations, but curves and counter-curves remained generally balanced. Priority was now on entertainment rather than power, and this shift could be seen in the ornamental repertoire, which ceded to a celebration of singeries, chinoiseries, and arabesques.
Owen Jones's famous 19th Century The Grammar of Ornament. © Creative Commons / Rawpixel
The excesses of one reign fueling the aspirations of the next, once again, everything changed under Louis XVI. The neoclassical wave that followed the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum swept across Europe, and rocaille motifs were forgotten for a time. Interiors swore only by the taste for the antique and pastoralism, offering rams, musical instruments, cornucopias, bows, garlands, and arabesques. Soon came the Revolution, then the Empire. As in the time of Louis XIV, power returned to the realm of ornament, supported by the determination to symbolize a new era, a new imperial dynasty. Napoleon’s bees rubbed shoulders with sphinxes inspired by Egyptian taste, the imperial eagle and swans spread their wings beside engraved N’s.
In the decades that followed, the 19th century took a liking to the rediscovery of the styles of the Ancien Régime, cheerfully mixing aesthetic references with eclectic spirit. Art Nouveau, then Art Deco, brought back a world of original creations, celebrating nature and the advent of a new world, before the modern movement temporarily put ornamental creation on hold, once again seen as decadent and superfluous in an architecture devoted to practical function. While the contemporary era proved once again willingly eclectic in its rediscovery of the styles of centuries past, one could not be blamed for thinking that, as happened after the 19th century, the coming decades will once again bring a moment of creation. Will there be an ornamental language for the 21st century?
Owen Jones's famous 19th Century The Grammar of Ornament. © Creative Commons / Rawpixel
Owen Jones's famous 19th Century The Grammar of Ornament. © Creative Commons / Rawpixel
Our company – boasting its own production workshops and approaching its second century of operations – brings together many skills specific to French decorative arts. Be it our boiserie and interior design workshops, our furniture and bronze workshops, or our design offices, more than a dozen forms of savoir-faire are expertly practiced at our three sites, each having its own venerable history, a legacy that is further enriched as it is taught by one generation to the next.
They are complementary, often complex, traditional, or innovative, and combine the nobility of handcraftsmanship and the perfection of age-old techniques with digital precision and other new practices born of technological advancements. Their uses are dedicated to the making of exceptional pieces and are mastered by women and men who, with passion and respect, transform the material into something even greater than itself and bring to life all the interiors imagined by our designers and executed for our trusting clients.
In the world of artistic creation, drawing holds a central place. It is the starting point of every work, a visual language that transcends materials to bring imagination to life. In this video series, explore how drawing, in all its forms, guides the transformation of spaces and objects.
Rinck introduces a hand-painted silk wallcovering: Fromental by Rinck “The Classicist Sketchbook", with the prestigious hand-painted and hand-embroidered wallcoverings company Fromental. Watch Valentin Goux and Lizzie Deshays disccuss their first collaboration.
In 1368, while the Hundred Years’ War was still raging in France, five thousand miles away, China’s new Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang had ousted the Mongols from power and established the Ming dynasty. Galvanized by the end of foreign dynastic domination, the Middle Empire closed its borders to the rest of the world, with very few exceptions. Seventy years earlier, in 1298, the story of a Venetian merchant in the court of Kublai Khan had sparked tremendous interest in Europe.
For more than two years, while our interior architecture studio has been working on a Louis XV interior-design project, we have been documenting the creative process. These slices of Rinck life are precious treasures for our archives, tracing the birth of a boiserie de style, from the first sketches to the scale drawings, from the sculpting to the gilding. This information serves as testament to our method as applied to neoclassical interior architecture – one of Rinck’s specialties since the late 19th century – as we design interior décors that satisfy our clients’ express wishes and precise tastes.
