Decoration with ostrich eggs
karta katalogowa kolekcji
Rzemiosło artystyczne
Far East and Europe
19th century
Wood, lacquer, ostrich eggs, wool, bronze
Ø 58 x 45 cm
Wil.2648 (round panel), Wil.3634 (suspension device with ostrich eggs)
This original decoration was made by using an Oriental round panel decorated with lacquer, four ostrich eggs and red wool yarn. Photographs from the early twentieth century show that it was displayed in one of the rooms of the Chinese Apartment, designed at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Stanisław Kostka Potocki. The Apartment was to present a diverse and large collection of art from the Far East, with the walls decorated with Oriental wallpaper, graphic works and pseudo-Chinese paintings. Large glassed-in cupboards, console tables and pedestals featured porcelain sculptures and small objects of daily use. The whole arrangement was supplemented with furniture, as a rule produced in Europe and modelled on the Far East; some pieces had been made in Wilanów.
Today, the Chinese Apartment designed by Potocki is known only from old photographs and descriptions, and the manner of showing the collections indicates that the rooms were arranged according to European visions of the interiors of Chinese and Japanese houses. The nineteenth-century public considered them extremely exotic, and attention was drawn to their distinctness and colourful variety.
Anna Ekielska-Mardal
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