Talk entitled: International Crosscurrents in Design: European Marquetry Furniture of the Late Seventeenth Century. Description: Europe in the late seventeenth century saw the emergence of cabinets as more than practical: not just containers for storage and transport, but decorative items whose splendor could enhance a room and hint at the valuable contents inside. Artisans of...

This seemingly simple model is actually one of the most accomplished of the staircase models produced in the compagnonnage tradition in France during the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. This meritocratic system of craftsmanship outside the traditional guilds started in the middle ages but reached its zenith after the French revolution when royal patronage...