Furniture & Interior decoration

Cette notice propose d’identifier les conditions ayant contribué au développement des collections de spécimens, d’objets et d’œuvres d’art en Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle.

Gift-giving was an ubiquitous practice that fostered sociability by reflecting and strengthening the ties between individuals (and even nations) but was also potentially fraught and could provoke tensions and anxieties. The practice was thus culturally ambiguous, creating doubts about the motives and expectations of the giver and about the obligations of the receiver.

The tea-table is an object, an event, and an idea, the context of which is the emergence of tea drinking in Britain in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. As an item of furniture, the tea-table is a small table, imported from Asia or of domestic manufacture, whose purpose was to facilitate tea drinking.

A la faveur d’une importation de panneaux peints chinois, la vogue des papiers peints s’installa durablement dans l’Angleterre du 18ème siècle. La variété des motifs empruntés à divers domaines reflétait une communauté de goût et de culture entre hôtes et invités dans les intérieurs particuliers, qui participait de leur distinction.