PGDE
5162
|
201130
|
Faculty:
Sarah Lawrence
This course will explore French furniture from a range of points of view; those of its designers and makers, of the city's guilds and trade regulators, of the elite women and men who used it and those, like us, who attempt to research and write histories of itThe course employs three main methods: the study of the object, the study of the representation of the object, and the theoretical positioning of the object. We will explore how pieces were built, considering how and why certain workshop practices developed, and whether furniture had agency in driving cultural practices and values We will consider how furniture was depicted, and why, in various eighteenth-century texts. We will consider the place of furniture in various theoretical fields of study and historiographies, particularly those of anthropology, sociology and social history, and also those of connoisseurship and histories of style.
