Of mahogany, brass, gilt-bronze, and painted cork. The trompe l'oeil exterior applied with cork painted to simulate an architectural ruin. The doors opening to the side to reveal a mahogany interior with rectangular shaped overhang top above two frieze draws with hinged fall front opening to reveal an interior fitted with drawers and pigeonholes. The lower section of three drawers fitted with gilt-bronze mounts. Overall inlaid with brass banding. Restoration to top.
The present secretaire à abattant is a metamorphic masterpiece, where a sleek piece of furniture is disguised behind a singularly decorative façade modeled as a ruin. A mechanism must be triggered in order to transform the piece and reveal the secretaire à abattant of polished mahogany with finely cast gilt-brass mounts beneath, lending it to a rare group of prized pieces of mechanical furniture especially popular in the royal or imperial courts of Europe.
Such complex mechanical pieces were almost exclusively made by German craftsmen, most famously from the workshops of David Roentgen. The exterior of the present cabinet is covered completely in cork designed to resemble an architectural ruin. Because of its coloration and porous qualities, cork is the ideal material for recreating the crumbling and deteriorating stone structures of the ancient world, and in the 18th century the art of modeling in cork, or phelloplastics, was born and the industry for making miniature cork replicas of classical ruins was created.
Cork models (Figure 1) became increasingly popular as Grand Tour trophies and as a means to bring the ancient architecture of Rome and elsewhere to those who had not traveled to see it firsthand. They were created both individually and in series, with the latter affordable only to the very wealthy, aristocrats and royalty. The earliest collector seems to have been the highly erudite Frederick II, Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, who ordered an entire series of models in 1726-7 from Roman cork modeler Antonio Chichi for the Museum Fridericianum, which was completed in 1769.1 Chichi was the most productive of Roman cork modelers whose other clientele included Sir John Soane, the Grand Duke Ludwig I of Hessen-Darmstadt and the Duke of Sachsen-Gotha.2
Of the German cork modelers, the most accomplished was Carl May. Interestingly, May was a konditor, or confectioner, by trade and his patrons included the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Archbishop Carl Theodor Freiherr of Dahlberg. As a royal pastry-cook, he created large-scale confectionary centerpieces and found that he could replace perishable displays with cork versions, which, in addition to their simply aesthetic value, would “inspire erudite conversation about historical monuments and works of art.”3 May’s models were largely based on drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, whose son, Francesco, served as his art agent.4 The breadth of May’s abilities is witnessed by the range in scale of his models, each replicated with keen precision, from a model of the Pyramid of Cestius constructed with a width of three inches to the Colosseum standing at over nine feet in diameter. Further to his modeling skills, May also designed interior schemes as well as an archaeological park.
Although the present secretaire is thought to be the only existing example of a piece of furniture veneered in cork, it is consonant with the taste for rooms designed as architectural landscapes, often in ruin, referred to as “fictive architecture” or “l’architeture au pinceau” (architecture with the brush), where the painted simulation of columns, arches, etc. cloak the walls and ceilings. The fashion for ruin rooms corresponds with the height of the Grand Tour tradition, and in the mid-1700s a number of architects including William Chambers, Germain Boffrand, and Robert Adam began to create interior and outdoor masterpieces reflecting the romance of ancient Rome. The appeal of these rooms arises from the challenge they pose one’s sense of reality by placing the spectator in a bucolic, romanticized atmosphere and evoking from him a feeling of total transportation.
The most famous of these is the Stanza delle Rovine (Room of the Ruins), a cell in the convent of S. Trinità dei Monti, which tops the Spanish Steps in Rome. The room was designed and executed in the second half of the 18th century by French artist and draughtsman Charles-Louis Clérisseau. After attending the French Academy in Rome for a time, Clerisseau supported himself in the city by instructing young artists and providing architectural views to those travelers on the Grand Tour, and served as a companion and inspiration to Adam during part of his Grand Tour in Rome.
Clerisseau was commissioned to decorate the Stanza by Père Thomas Le Sueur and Père François Jacquier. The result is a capriccio in which the room appears to be falling down around the spectator. In his drawings for the room, now in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, large holes are simulated in the walls and ceiling (Figure 2). Plaster is peeling, columns have crumbled, and vegetation has begun creeping its way indoors. The fully executed room is even more impressive and was amplified by complementary furnishings. “The effect is enhanced,” writes fellow artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, “by the furniture which is in character. The bed was a richly decorated vessel, the fireplace a mixture of diverse fragments, the desk a damaged antique sarcophagus, the table and the chairs a piece of cornice and inverted capital.”5 Though the furnishings described by Piranesi are equally idiosyncratic they do not appear to have been made of cork; the present secretaire thus remaining unique in this aspect.
Schloss Erbach, a Renaissance style German palace built in the 16th century on the site of an ancient castle, contains “Roman Rooms” built to recreate the world of classical antiquity, to house sculpture and artefacts. The Second Roman Room contains a wall outfitted in cork made to look like ruins (Figure 3). The Schloss was renovated in the 18th century and contains numerous collections formed by Count Franz I von Erbach, who created a private cultural history museum for himself that included antique sculptures and vases, Chinese porcelain, arms and armor, and a stateroom with a collection of antlers. The cork wall of the Roman Room features a crumbling wall with pilaster and fallen stones strewn about the floor, with moss and ivy growing forth from the rubble. A classical pedestal made of cork supports a marble bust of Drusus with the wall behind it is adorned with spears, helmets and an animal skin. Drusus was a Roman politician and military commander who routed German tribes in 11 BC. His portrait bust juxtaposed with the architectural ruin is an allusion to the transience of power. The present secretaire corresponds closely to this style of interior and would have fitted harmoniously into this room, or another of its type.
The present secretaire remains distinctly German in composition, as demonstrated by the desk itself. Mechanical devices are activated by pressing buttons and levers, and absolutely transforms the piece. One of the main proponents of mechanized furniture was David Roentgen. His desks, cabinets, and tables included sundry hidden drawers, multiple tabletops, secret writing compartments, and even concealed music boxes. Another metamorphic piece in the manner of David Roentgen, which like the present piece was able to change in exterior appearance, was a commode formerly in the Carlton Hobbs collection: its polite, blond wood-inlaid front pivoted 180 degrees to reveal dark and austere niched panels on its reverse.
Although the present secretaire was probably not executed by Roentgen, its maker would have known his oeuvre, possibly even having had direct knowledge of Roentgen’s use of mechanical devices. One prospective craftsman is Johannes Klinckerfuss, who worked in the Roentgen manufactory after being trained by his father. Klinckerfuss would have gone on to head the Roentgen company’s St. Petersburg branch, had it not been for the First War of Coalitions in 1792. Instead, Klinckerfuss became Kabinettebenist to the Court of Stuttgart in 1799 and established his own manufactory in 1812. The form of secretaires by Klinckerfuss formerly in Schloss Rosenstein are related to the interior of the present piece, though we know of no other pieces that demonstrate a similar effect of total metamorphosis.
In the case of the present piece, a lever at the base, when pressed, prompts the cork façade doors to swing open 270 degrees so that the mahogany-clad inner surfaces cover the sides of the cabinet, presenting the appearance of complete construction in mahogany. Additionally, a button pressed on the upper right corner of the interior causes the top of the cabinet to rise, revealing a mirrored underside and shallow hidden cavity. Historical hypothesis grants that this would allow someone at the desk to simply look up in order to see objects concealed in the top of the secretaire.
Note to Restoration:
Carlton Hobbs consulted closely with a leading German academic expert in the applied arts. At acquisition, the secretaire was lacking its rising cornice. It is certain that the cornice existed due to the witness marks of a pair of hinges to the rear back edge of the top. Furthermore, clear evidence is found on the inside of the piece that shows that the top was originally activated by the rotation of the mahogany corner posts when both exterior doors are in fully open mode.
Having spent many hours analyzing the piece, the German expert proposed that the top would have been a simple faux capping stone decoration in the same fashion and its underside may well have been fitted with a mirror that perfectly reflected an object when the observer was seated, such as an ancient bas relief, in the rectangular cavity that exists on the top.
The internal mechanism of lever and pulleys was reconstructed by an eminent German engineer following the clear evidence of marks in the internal structure.
Measurements:
Height: 64" (162.5 cm); Width: 44" (112 cm); Depth: 21 1/2" (54.5 cm).
Footnotes:
1. Helmberger, Werner and Valentin Kockel. ROM: Über Die Alpen Tragen. 53.
2. ibid.
3. Pereira, Helen, Ed. Cork: Biology, Production and Uses. St. Louis: Elsevier Science Ltd., 2007. 248.
4. Helmberger. 53.
5. McCormick, Thomas J. Charles-Louis Clerrisseau and the Genesis of Neoclassicism. New York: MIT Press, 1991. 103.
