The famed Metropolitan Museum once hosted an epoch-breaking exhibition named Metropolitan Vanities: The History of the Dressing Table. There are few such furniture pieces with the potential to unearth fascinating social, cultural, taste and leisure related insights as the humble (may be not so humble!) dressing table. This popular exhibition delved deeper into the origin of this furniture piece and it threw up some wonderful facts to say the least! The chequered history of this item is synonymous with the evergreen impulse to stay fashionable, dress up and look attractive. It is synonymous with toilette, the extensive, sophisticated and elegant ritual of dressing up.
A journey from Europe to America There remains heady demand for dressing tables online, centuries after it was first popularized in Europe. The origin starts from ornately designed boxes, used for holding jars for beauty products, flasks for perfumes and exotic oils of the time. They also contained tools for makeup application and requisite mirrors as well. The origin of vanity can be traced to the late 17th century in Europe with the upper crust commissioning highly specialized premium furniture. The earliest examples include the poudreuse in France and Beau Brummel along with the English shaving table. In fact, one of the superior period examples include the Vandercruse Mechanical Table built between 1761-63. Most innovatively, this table had the top sliding back with the front coming out to reveal the inner compartments and vanity mirror. The table may have been reportedly built for Madame de Pompadour’s (1721-1764) chateau over the Seine. She was the formidable mistress of none other than King Louis XV and a major contributor to the art of the toilette conducted in style at a dressing table. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) is the other woman who probably had a role to play in the evolution of the dressing table. History knows her as the wife of King Louis XVI and also for other reasons! Americans had their own versions of tables including the Chippendale style and influences from Elizabethan, Colonial, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo and other designs. These tables ultimately became complementary furniture items for bedroom suites by the late 19th century. Grander versions started symbolizing luxury and glamour, particularly with Hollywood connotations in the early 20th century. This was shown in countless movies in the art deco period of the 1920s and 1930s. Fantasy worlds were created with penthouses and skyscrapers in Manhattan, lavish interiors and heroines sitting down to dress at aesthetically stunning tables in their bedrooms or separate rooms for this purpose. One of the iconic designs in the period was the enamel and chrome-plated steel dressing table by Norman Bel Geddes in 1932. In recent years however, dressing table designs have indicated diverse styles including the molded-plastic valet cabinet by Raymond Loewy in 1969 and the 1981 Plaza dressing table and stool courtesy of Michael Graves. In fact, the evolution was complete with the 2013 masterpiece by Korean designer Choi Byung Hoon. It serves as a template for the minimalist tables of modern times. Who would know that something that is as common today, would hold so much history, art and information within its cavernous innards? Now that’s what we call fascinating!
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February 2022
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