Centrepieces: Compositions for the adornment of the European formal table in the long eighteenth century

Abstract

Throughout eighteenth-century Europe, elaborate indoor and outdoor food presentations and displays were staged at the residences of the royal houses, the nobility, and the emerging upper bourgeoisie. Alongside the orderly display of the service à-la-française and the highly artistic vessels laden with food, impressive table-top ensembles, now generally called centrepieces, were carefully selected to match the theme of the occasion and the rank of the host and their guests. These ensembles could depict a plethora of subjects in a vast array of materials, sizes and compositions, becoming powerful displays in miniature, unfolding right in front of the eyes of the diners and, often, eager spectators. Nowadays, most early modern European decorative arts collections feature at least one artefact classified as a ‘centrepiece’, with many institutions safely keeping impressive examples in their holdings. This research addresses contemporary modes of display and the significant historiographical issues in the relevant discourse: collecting, displaying, and discussing the surviving centrepieces in various forms (i.e. in text, material form, depiction) has often led to decontextualisation and loss of their perceived initially multi-layered character. My central thesis is that the long-eighteenth-century centrepiece must be reimagined as a complex ‘display machine’ for dining, performing that function by adorning and facilitating the meal, both in the literal and the figurative sense. The broad materiality and the variety of themes constitute the other significant part of this research, proving the inventiveness involved and the multiple allusions meant in the creation of elaborate, three-dimensional scenes. This PhD is the result of great curiosity and a desire to unravel the simultaneously familiar and enigmatic eighteenth-century centrepieces, combined with the recognised need for a monograph focused solely on this largely understudied but fascinating focal point of the European elite table of the time. The way to achieve this was the Herculean task of bringing the production and the discourse of such ensembles from across the continent into a single perspective, removing the various boundaries that often split them into contrasting realms of material culture. Temporary or permanent; art or craft; metalwork, ceramics, glass, sugar, or any other material; princely or ordinary; finally, French, Italian, English, or of any other place of origin, these ensembles ultimately shared common roots and characteristics, and served for an international and interconnected European clientele who purchased and used them according to their many specialised needs.