An unknown V&A Cabinet - some thoughts

I'm on the cusp of handing in my dissertation and to both my delight and dismay, I'm still finding potentially relevant interesting additions. As I explained to the lovely assistant curator at the V&A last week, it's as if the bench has provided the key to many doors and I'm being invited in to explore. Two items have come to light this week and I wanted to  quickly get some thoughts down on paper. The first is related to my V&A visit, and the second is a Jost Amman woodcut which I have just discovered. I will be focusing on the first below.

On Thursday afternoon we went down to the old post office which serves as the storage for one of the most interesting museum collections in London. As we were issued security passes, the AC was there waiting to escort us upstairs to a massive lumber room with the most interesting rolling shelves contents I've ever seen. As she identified the right shelf, we looked around us, taking in the stag horn mirror, a golden bed stead, 1950s sofas, and various interesting shapes covered in white dust sheets. Like an attic of sleeping beauties, waiting for a visit from someone who knows where to find them.

Jost Amman and the Wire Drawing Bench

You know when you're racing against the clock and you can see a deadline waving a chequered flag? Of course this is the time that I'm having some seriously interesting conversations with experts, as well as trying to piece together a totally wild iconographic programme. However I wanted to get this on here because it raises some points which I should probably investigate but I'm scared of venturing too far off the landscape point.

It's also entirely the work of one of the people who knows the bench best, Stephanie Deprouw. Although we have not yet met, we have had some wonderful exchanges, so any mistakes are mine, because of my terrible French.

Marquetry decoration on August I's wiredrawing bench

Wood; the material out of which which the bulk of the bench is made and decorated. It is essential to look more closely at it, especially with my focus on the landscape and the environment. 

Marquetry as a way of adorning objects has a long history. Evidence of its practice has been traced back to the ancient Egyptians, with the Greeks and Romans carrying on the tradition of beautifying their furniture with rare wood inlays. In fifteenth-century Italy, a method of decoration called intarsia became very popular amongst the elite. Solid timber was hollowed out then filled in with valuable metals, precious stones, ivory and rare woods. Marquetry differs from intarsia; thin layers of wood veneer are cut, collected in a design, and laid out over the surface which is to be decorated’ rather than inserted into a hollowed out base.[1] This jigsaw of different wood veneers is precisely how the bench decoration was made.

Mastering Colour and other tricks

High definition colour feels like an entirely modern invention. Saturated manipulated photos, flat screen LCD tvs and 3D cinematic experiences combine to produce a visual pummelling apparently like never before. We have become so accustomed to synthetic colour that we take it for granted, like a cake addict, we are immune to the occasional treat.

So when we emerged blinking from the national gallery basement last night, our eyes had been reset and our brains reattuned to the special nature of the colours around us. The ridiculously blue cock and the bright flags of Trafalgar Square shining in the sunshine had taken on a new significance. They seemed to be a continuation of what we'd seen in Making Colour. A colour wheel of life, perhaps.

The Decoration on August's Wire Drawing Bench

The wire drawing bench in Écouen is the only remaining object of its type. Although many plain wooden goldsmith's benches can be found in museum collections, this one from 1565 is unique. Just as modern scientific instruments are functional and lack a certain mystery, these plain workaday benches are nothing like the Elector of Saxony's wire drawing bench. They have been employed as indispensable goldsmith tools since the middle ages. An engraving by Etienne Delaune demonstrates how the bench was used; the long wooden beam was equipped with a crank, pliers and pulling iron, and used for drawing and profiling metal wires.