SYNOPSIS/BACKGROUND OF A TALE OF TWO ARCHITECTURES: JOSEPH PAXTONS CRYSTAL PALACE AND GOTTFRIED SEMPERS TABLE-CABINET

he following paper is part of my dissertation on a small selection of Gottfried Sempers designs that he completed in Zurich between 1854 and 1872. In this section I explore the perhaps heretical juxtaposition of a canonical building (Paxtons Crystal Palace) with a virtually unknown and I would argue, underratedpiece of furniture designed by Semper for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

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A TALE OF TWO ARCHITECTURES: JOSEPH PAXTONS CRYSTAL PALACE AND GOTTFRIED SEMPERS TABLE-CABINET

Figure 1: Left, interior view of Crystal Palace, redrawn by author, from McKean, John. Crystal Palace: Joseph Paxton and Charles Fox. Architecture in Detail. (London: Phaidon, 1994): 35, and, right, exterior view of Sempers Table-Cabinet, redrawn by author, from Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen. Gottfried Semper, 1803-1879: Baumeister zwischen Revolution und Historismus; Katalog zur Ausstellung Gottfried Semper zum 100. Todestag, die 1979 in Dresden im Albertinum stattfand. (Mnchen, 1980): 328.

n architectural histories the Crystal Palace, which housed the International Exhibition of 1851 in London, has occupied an arbitrary but nevertheless signicant hinge point in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its design represents architectures shift from one-o, hand-made artifacts to the on-site assemblage of machine-made and mass-produced building components, following industrialization in the other arts and sciences.1 In the fall of 1851, just after the close of the exhibition, the architect and architectural historian Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) wrote a brief but important essay on the exhibits potential consequences for architecture. Published as Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst: Vorschlge zur Anregung Nationalen Kunstgefhles [Science, Industry and Art: Proposals for the Development of a National Sensibility to Art], the essay revealed the broad scope of Sempers positions with respect to the development of the arts and their contemporary state in mid-century Europe. Yet the text exhibited, too, his diculties to incorporate into the realm of architecture the very advances in materials and construction technology that had made the Crystal Palace possible. hroughout history the inuence of technology on architectural production has been profound. And yet, aside from a few exceptions, architects have been slow to adopt latest technologies for their own designs. Semper is no exception. Fifteen years after workers used thousands of mass-produced parts to assemble the Crystal Palace, Semper still relied on manual stone 208

cutting procedures, as evidenced in his design for a mid-size building like the Polytechnicum observatory in Zurich. Although he wrote in his pamphlet about the necessity of interaction among architects, manufacturers, and clients in order to advance architectural production, Semper himself seemed reluctant to move past conventional historicist architectural designs that appeared to be more the product of one designer rather than a group eort of many professions. And yet, his conservative insistence to refer to the past as an important element in design can be interpreted as a position in which the production of architecture is not only dependent on the use of latest technologies but also on historical and cultural foundations that tend to adjust more slowly to new conditions. In the post-Crystal-Palace period of the nineteenth century, the relations between science and industry changed rapidly. Science until that time had proted from industrial inventions. Now, with new developments in research and testing methods, science began to inuence industry. For example, advances in metallurgy led Sempers predecessor Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781- 1841) to use cast and rolled zinc extensively in his designs in the 1820s, both for ornamental railings of bridges, and in sheet form as roong material. Sempers take was more nuanced. By 1851 he wrote with both admiration and contempt about the ability of caoutchouc to mimic other, less adaptive materials: [R]ubber and caoutchouc are vulcanized and utilized in a thousand imitations of wood, metal, and stone carvings, exceeding by far the natural limitations of the material they purport to represent.2 Semper would have seen these new technologies showcased in the Crystal Palace. New advances in materials technology brought about a revaluation of the classication of materials. In his 1851 essay Semper developed a taxonomy whose industrial logic could be extended into the logic of architecture. In his assessment of the exhibit Semper initially rejected two possible approaches for a comparative overview of the exhibits content. He suggested that the rst reading, a simple, linear description of the exhibits artifactsbeginning at one end of the building and nishing at the other resembled too much a method a guide-book would employ. He found the second choice, following the categories for a systematic evaluation handed down by the Head Juries that involved a spatial compartmentalization and subsequent sectioning into four divisions, a skillful plan. However, after some consideration he rejected both venues since they were limited by external and material criteria. Instead his interpretation of the exhibit consisted of a translation of Cuviers taxonomic systemcategorizing animals not according to their historical lineage but by cross-species relationsinto 209

an advanced model of architectural education and practice. Translated into architectural theory, this system would register a glass cup in the same category as a clay vessel because both are used for holding and pouring liquids. For Semper it was only a small step from this reclassication of an existing system of everyday artifacts to a radical revaluation of the signicance of everyday artifacts for the writing of architectural histories.

Figure 2: Left, Laugiers Primitive Hut, from Wright, Gwendolyn. History for Architects. In The History of History in American Schools of Architecture 1865-1975, edited by Gwendolyn Wright and Janet Parks, 13-52. (New York: Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and Princeton Architectural Press, 1990): 35. Right, the Caribbean Hut from Sempers Der Stil, from Semper, Gottfried. Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Knsten oder Praktische Aesthetik. Ein Handbuch fr Techniker, Knstler und Kunstfreunde. 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag fr Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft, 1860): 276.

Rather than rely on unveriable and narrowly conceived architectural theories like the evolution of the temple from primitive hutsdiscovered supposedly by chance in a forestSemper located the tentative origin of architectural generation in the instruments, tools, and artifacts with which and around which humans have constructed their lives. Furthermore, his focus on the quotidian as both generator and transmitter of architecture can be read as an attempt to undermine the implicit hierarchical relations between high arttreated in ocial art historiesand a low or everyday art explored in such elds as anthropology or archaeology. In those cases where architects had adopted new technologies, Semper criticized their incapacity to use them appropriately. As an example for the uncritical approach artists or architects took in their work, he referred to the articial illuminations exhibited in the Crystal Palace. He attacked the disappearance of facades in London behind the temporary gloss of pyrotech210

nics, and pointed to a practice in ancient Rome where the use of oil lamps articulated the window sills of buildings that in turn improved the perception of a buildings massing and rhythm.3 Rather than suggest that artists should copy the Roman example he asked instead for a practical heuristic that would guide the designer to steer around historical precedents and enhance the basic motifs by developing a perpetual rework.4 He compared these basic motifs to original forms [Urformen] which were the simplest expression of an idea in his system. he origin of these basic forms could be found in nature, but the architectto recall Sempers statement from a London lecture in 18545invents and produces wholly articial works. here exist no direct but always only mediated references to nature. Unlike the artist who transforms nature into art by improving on her through the arts, the architect invents from scratch, even if she works, at least until the invention of synthetics, with natural materials. In other words, the architect needs to translate rather than copy.

Table-Cabinet
Any apparatus is, similar to a building, a whole that is assembled from parts that exercise their own functions while they cooperate with the other parts toward a common goal. [] Every part has to express its function through its exterior, and the choice of ornaments has to be made with the intention to articulate through their use the characteristic uniqueness and function of every part and the whole. Just as it is necessary to show in a monument its immobility, a mobile artifact has to express its mobility. hat is why the supports of ancient mobile artifacts are so often ornamented with the feet of animals. Semper, Klassikation der Gefe (1884 [1852]) Shortly after Semper had written his review of the Great Exhibition, he designed a table-cabinet that now stands in the Victoria and Albert museum in London. Semper designed the furniture piece for Queen Victoria, and by extension, Prince Albert,6 who knew of Sempers work through Henry Cole, who was Sempers employer and the main proponent in directing the eorts to bring about the International Exhibition of 1851.7 In this essay Semper described the table-cabinet as a piece of furniture that represented symbolically the four types of collections he envisioned for a public museum to be housed in the post-exhibition Crystal Palace.8 he collections would have included ceramic, textile, and wooden artifacts, as well as a collection of objects related to bricklayers and engineers.9 However, 211

even though this projected use would have been appropriate for the space of the Crystal Palace, Sempers design for the table-cabinet represented instead an inversion of the Crystal Palaces architectural characteristics. he table-cabinet consisted of a panoply of dierent ornamentation and style references that were countered on its interior by plain surfaces. On the other hand, while the Exhibition building expressed a new era of highly controlled and precise mass-produced building technology with its repetitive pattern of structural supports and vast glazing on the exterior, on the interior it representedby its very nature as an exhibition buildingthe eclectic disarray of a nineteenth-century interieur, heightened by an Owen Jones-designed polychrome dazzle that articulated the interior structural parts while simultaneously letting them dissolve into the exhibition pieces.10 he joint that links both table-cabinet and Crystal Palace is the word cabinet, at least if we follow William Whewellone of the Great Exhibitions many criticswho called the Crystal Palace a magical glass cabinet.11 An 1852 journal article indicates its surreal spatial adjacencies. Beginning on the western entry and ending in the center of the building, the plan lists in sequence: two large mirrors, model of the Liverpool docks, horse head with busts, Plymouth harbor breakwater, cli of the Isle of Wight, model of Dundee, model of the state barge of the Lord Major, fountain, models of the Dnieper-Brittannia and Chepstow bridges, model of the Nicolai church in Hamburg, models of churches, telescopes, lantern for light towers, Colebrookdale dome and eagle killer, Shakespeare, furs, marble re place, Sheeld knives, fountain with drinking water, large clock, chemical preparations, door frames, stone wreath, two posts, fountain, Rosamunde, models of viaduct bridges, opera house, mirror, memorial plate, Canadian woods, horse and dragon, silk cloth, eagle killer, Venus and Cupid.12 However, while the Crystal Palace revealed its apparently chaotic interior at least partially from the outside, the table-cabinet resisted any clear identication of its contents, as it reected and distorted its external context in the inset hemispherical mirrors and the polished silver inlay of the table top.13 Both cabinets, however, mark the beginning of new phases of architectural design, one literally in its use of new construction technology, emphasis on mass production, and fast completion; the other symbolically as a hybrid transitional device between Sempers early texts on polychromy and monumental designs, and the more mature workboth in theoretical and in built termsof his later years in Zurich and Vienna. Both cabinets, too, share the status of generative objects that have held the potential to inuence architectural production long after their physical manifestation has faded.14 In architectural education the glass cabinet has become one of the icons of modernism, making its appearance in survey 212

courses as a corner stone of the theoretical building called architectural history. A modernist mythology has been constructed around the signicance of the Crystal Palace machine-made mass-produced structural parts, at the expense of its highly sensual, polychromatic interior.15 Sempers table-cabinet, on the other hand, has so far existed in relative obscurity. In 1976 it appeared in one publication, and then only en passant, when Barbara Mundt wrote on the relations between Sempers craft designs and the industrial arts.16 Mundt suggested that the table-cabinet represented the coming-together of elements of dierent styles in a new whole.17 Following Mundt, Martin Frhlich mentioned the table-cabinet briey in his collection of Sempers Zurich drawings,18 but, in opposition to Mundt, he found it quite dicult to evaluate, considering its non-unied [uneinheitliche] forms.19

Figure 3: Left, detail of the Table-Cabinet, from Mundt, Barbara. Das Verhltnis einiger kunsthandwerklicher Entwrfe Sempers zum historischen Kunstgewerbe. In Gottfried Semper und die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Eva Brsch-Supan, 315-328. (Basel: Birkhuser Verlag, 1976): 316. Middle, detail of Table-Leg, from Institut fr Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Semper Archiv, ETH-Zrich. Right, detail of Tortoise support of Cabinet, from Dresden, Staatliche Kunst-sammlungen. Gottfried Semper, 1803-1879: Baumeister zwischen Revolution und Historismus; Katalog zur Ausstellung Gottfried Semper zum 100. Todestag, die 1979 in Dresden im Albertinum stattfand. (Mnchen, 1980): 328.

he term uneinheitlich points in this context to a transformative generation, a shift of the table-cabinet into a monstrous object, i.e. a compound of multiple, unresolved parts that do not t together seamlessly (Figure 5). he table-cabinet demonstrates its historical seams with its multiple origins that can be located in Pompeian and Etruscan precedentsSemper borrowed the lion-legs, for example from a tripod he had encountered in his travels to Pompeii20ancient mythology, gothic sculpture, Renaissance architecture, romantic salon art, and Rococo details.21 I would argue that this 213

apparent confusion of styles can be rendered intelligible by an underlying order that is grounded in classication and categorization. Just as the emerging science museums of the late 1800s became not only public showcases of new collections but also preserved the evidence of scientic discoveries, the table-cabinet can serve as architectural evidence to support Sempers theoretical positions. Historically the cabinet as a building type metamorphosed from the curiosity cabinets of the 17th and 18th centuries into the science museums of the nineteenth century. In addition to the Crystal Palace and Sempers cabinet, there exists a third one, namely Cuviers museum of comparative anatomy, or the Parisian Jardin du Roi which is known colloquially as a cabinet and names both the building and what it contains, i.e. a storage device that hold examples of plant and animal species.22 In a fortunate etymological development, what we know today as a word for a piece of furniture began as a direct reference to an architectural construction. In the later half of the 16th century cabinets were tent shelters for soldiers in the eld as well as display and repository cases for valuable artifacts and specimens. By 1676 the display case had ballooned into a space for the arrangement or display of works or art.23 And Cuvier described his work place, the French Musum National dHistoire Naturelle founded in 1626 as a royal garden of medicinal plantsas a cabinet.24 Opened to the public in 1650, this scientic cabinet quickly became a center of study for a small but inuential group of botanists, among them G.-L.L. Buon (17391788), the Jussieu brothers, George Cuvier, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck25 (1744-1829). Faced with the formidable task of ordering their collection of plants and animal skeletons into a comprehensible system of knowledge, the curators of the Jardin began to classify their specimens according to certain characteristics. he evolving comparative method, a continuous renement of what belonged together and what did not, attempted to make sense of the here and now by analyzing the past, in the assumption that the heritage of a species could be traced back in time, and then, through a kind of reverse engineering of this linear process, forward into the present. Semper adopted both his systemic approach to architecture and the specic system of classication from Cuvier after visiting the Jardin des Plantes in the 1820s. In the introduction to Der Stil Semper framed his task, not unlike Cuvier had done earlier in the sciences, by dividing the technical arts into categories and considering each of these categories independently, in so far as it was necessary to give proof of each categorys inuence on the generation of artistic symbols in general, and architectonic symbols specically. hrough this process of categorization Semper came to the conclusion that 214

the fundamental laws of style in the technical arts were identical to those that governed architectural production.26

Analysis
he table-cabinet can be divided into two major parts, a lower table and an upper cabinet.27 he shorter bottom supports the proper cabinet which is equipped on the front with one hinged door that is surrounded by a coered frame. Formally Semper adopted some of the table-cabinets details from a modied French style that was based originally on architectural references and elaborate ornamentation. For example, he mentions in Der Stil some Louis XVI furniture pieces that appear to be a forerunner to the table part of the table-cabinet.28

Figure 4: Rinceau and Wedgewood Medallions of table-cabinet, detail redrawn by author, from Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen. Gottfried Semper, 1803-1879: Baumeister zwischen Revolution und Historismus; Katalog zur Ausstellung Gottfried Semper zum 100. Todestag, die 1979 in Dresden im Albertinum stattfand. (Mnchen, 1980): 328.

In the history of furniture-making cabinets were conceived as representative pieces that signied emblematically through their inlaid and carved ornamentation,29 and Semper had praised the Renaissance practice of using inlaid wood work in the Tektonik section of Der Stil.30 As Mundt observed, the inlaid work around the center panel recounted the coered ceilings and mirror frames of Renaissance interiors.31 However, rather than use conventional architectural references like columns, gables, or temple facades, Semper designed a hybrid artifact inspired by anthropomorphic animal parts. He drew from some of those animalistic registers in the tables cartouches that are placed symmetrically around the drawer handle. his, in turn, connects to a sculpted lions head that might be interpreted to ward o any unauthorized users. he word cartouche described in ancient Egypt an 215

amulet worn as a protection against the loss of ones name (i.e., ones identity).32 he cartouche also characterizes the table-cabinet as an assembly of dierent pieces whose identity is blurred at the joints between the parts. he lower table stands on four short dreidel out of which emerge, in some fantastic metamorphosis, four monstrous carved lion legs-cum-heads. Illustrations in books on early nineteenth-century British furniture depicted tables with hybrid lion leg-heads that had their origins in archaeological precedents from Pompeii.33 he monsters terminate in an apron with a drawer located just underneath the table top. Here the table as tabula [tablet] is a mappa mundi that inscribes a theory of the world, of how the world is seen from a geographers point of view; a view that de-monstrates a particular position. he table-top does not provide a direct support for the cabinet above. Rather, four tortoises act as mobile intermediaries that transfer the cabinets load to the table. he lion-leg/head table legs can be read as a built reference to Sempers theory of structural symbols, not in the sense of an applied theory but rather as a rendering of theory onto practice. I am using the word rendering here not in the graphic sense of depiction but in its old French meaning of giving back, where theory gives back its knowledge to practice. Of course, bearing in mind his theory of Bekleidung, Semper may have preferred the meaning of to render as to coat something (a brick, say) with plaster or concrete, i.e. a process of transformation, and also a cladding of one material with another. he decorporated lionsall feet and headwould then represent a symbolic narrative about physical mobility (feet) and intellectual mobility (head). In a lecture from 1854, contemporaneous with the design of the table-cabinet, Semper explained, how, in the history of furniture, the feet of a chair often borrowed their design from an animal in order to express the animals upright position and mobility.34 he table-cabinets long s-shaped legs appear to ex under the load of the upper cabinet, and articulate simultaneously a natural legs tensioned position in a dynamic repose, ready to react with immediate ight or ght.35 And yet, the long, at, horizontal x-shaped binding that wraps around the four dreidel shackles the four legs and eectively prevents the contraption from walking away,36 tempering the desire for mobility with the need for stability. Mundt has pointed out another possible reference for Sempers choice of feet. In a lecture he gave in London in the early 1850s37 Semper recalled from a visit to the British Museum a tripod on lions legs that were in turn supported by tortoises which seemed to move along slowly and imperceptibly. here exists no image of this tripod in Sempers papers, although he may have seen one of several tripods in the two major collections of 216

Etruscan artifacts, either in the Villa Giulia or the Vatican, during his visits to Rome. He referred in the same lecture also to Peter Vischers bronze cast of the Sebaldus shrine in the St. Sebalds church in Nuremberg which appeared to glide on a group of small bronze snails.38

Mobility
he upper cabinet rests on four silver tortoises that sitor appear to swimon a highly polished inlaid silver surface which mirrors the underside of the cabinet above.39 If the cabinet signies the world, this mirror reects the underbelly of the world. he smooth plane functions as a calm ocean on which the tortoises appear as islands, recalling perhaps an ancient creation myth of Native Americans. In Iroquois tradition a tortoise saved the grandmother of mankind, who fell from the skybefore there was an earthby catching the grandmother on her back. According to the story a musk-rat then started piling dirt from the bottom of the sea onto the tortoises back, creating the rst island from which eventually grew the whole earth.40 here exist other creation myths in which tortoises play a central role as the originators and bearers of the universe. In these myths the tortoises stabilize the heavenssignied by their domed shelland the earth, signied by their at or slightly convex bottoms. In ancient myths a tortoise also represents the materia prima of the work. It marked the starting point of development, the Ursprung or origin of the world.41 In each case the tortoises bodyoccupying the space between heaven and earthcarries the world on its shell.42 If the tortoises represent a mythical joint between a monstrous underworld and a human-occupied world above, the table-cabinet can be read as a representation of the conict between muthos and logos. he word myth derives from the Greek mythos, which ranges in meaning from word, through saying and story, to ction. Mythos can be contrasted with logos, a word whose validity can be argued and demonstrated. Because myths narrate fantastic events with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed that they are simply stories with no factual basis, and the word has become a synonym for falsehood or, at best, misconception. And yet, myths organize the world not only of ancient civilizations but also of contemporary readings of culture, as expressed in any artistic or architectural form, including furniture. In addition to mobile furniture, cabinetry-making is also the art of beautiful joints. In deance of classicist principles and in support of modernist dogma to separate unlike functions from each other, Semper care217

fully dierentiated and articulated every part of the table-cabinet. His silver tortoises work in this case as a double joint. As amphibian monsters they demonstrate an alternate version of classicist design principles where joints between disparate parts are articulated rather than hidden behind smooth transitions. he tendency of furniture makers to ornament their works with nautical symbols is already embedded in the word furniture, which derived from the Old French word furnir and describes necessary equipment43 on a ship. Semper inserted other maritime references into the cabinet. For example, the edge below the cabinets parapet is a carved rinceau, an ornamental edge apparently of liquid waves carved into wood (Figure 4). he parapet at the top edge of the cabinet contains six Wedgewood porcelain medallions, that, again as a nautical reference, read like portholes in the side of a ship. As a joint between the parapet and the frame below, Semper employed wave-like ornaments. he mobility implied by the nautical references, the tortoises, and the lion feet signify mobility without physical animation. And yet, the assumption that furniture, or for that matter, buildings, narrowly dened as structure, do not move is erroneous since any building, no matter how structurally over-designed, experiences movement through oscillation, expansion, contraction, and/or vibration. And, of course, many devices that are part of a building are mobile. In a shift back to the other cabinet, the Crystal Palace, it may be useful to remember that the buildings frame was dismantled at the Hyde Park site and reassembled in Londons suburb of Sydenham, before it nally disappeared in a conagration.

Frame
he frame is one of the most important base forms of art. Semper, Der Stil (1860)

here exist two versions of the table-cabinet: Sempers design and the built version executed by the British company Holland & Sons.44 he slippage between Sempers drawings and their execution by the furniture company Holland & Sons is signicant. Sempers projection shows a still life in the door panel; the built version displays instead a picturesque landscape that recalls Mulreadys Crossing the Ford from 1842,45 a literal and representational rite of passage. he cabinet builders inverted Sempers design from an interior still life to an exterior scene. Interior and exterior have exchanged positions. Nevertheless, against the empathetic tendency

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to pass visually through the frame, someone encountering the cabinet still occupies the space in front of the artifact. he in-front-of the cabinet can also be read as an outside-the-house.46 In ancient times the word cabinet described a small or private room set aside for a specic activity.47 As an architectural convention, cabinets work as transitional spaces, and they are often noted on architectural plans from the nineteenth century as such. Semper, for example, marked the intermediary spaces between the bedroom [Schlafzimmer] and the living room [Wohnzimmer oder Stube] on the drawings of the upper oor of the Villa Garbald with the word cabinet.48

Figure 5: Left, center panel of cabinet as designed, from Institut fr Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Semper Archiv, ETH-Zrich. Right, center panel as built, detail from Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen. Gottfried Semper, 1803-1879: Baumeister zwischen Revolution und Historismus; Katalog zur Ausstellung Gottfried Semper zum 100. Todestag, die 1979 in Dresden im Albertinum stattfand. (Mnchen, 1980): 328.

he table-cabinets single front door provides a tool to access the origins of Sempers theories. In a parallel mode Cuviers cabinet in the Jardin des Plantes represents a particular position from which the natural sciences provide the means to explain the history of the natural world. Transferred into architecture, the framed, centered door panel provides a view into the cabinet from the outside. he frame appears to be a window. he painted view oers a view through the frame, negating the cabinets depth. A centered, i.e. a privileged, frontal view and only a frontal viewprovides the illusion of a coered door, implying depth where there is only shallow relief (Figure 5). he physical depth of the cabinet corresponds approximately to the apparent depth implied by the coered frame. In architecture, frames conventionally mark imagined or real passages through walls. Frames suggest displacement or travel. he coered frame recalls the German Koer,49 a piece of luggage through which one may enter, beginning with the frame, i.e. with the margin, with the device that holds the center from spilling out. For Semper the frame works as an apparatus 219

out of which architecture could emerge in a sequence of layered relations that describe, ex post facto, the Crystal Palace. First the framework with the appropriate inll. Second the diagonal bracing [Geschrnk50], a complicated framework. hird the support. Fourth the scaolding [Gestell51], a collaboration of the supportive work with the framework to something complete in itself.52 For the space above the frame Semper designed a frieze or rinceau which is a decorative strip of naturalized ornaments. Roman rinceau often consisted of an undulating double vine helix, growing from a vase. Branches, vines, and thistles were mixed together in Gothic rinceau, and in the Renaissance examples of tiny animals or human heads appeared as ornamentation. Semper employed tropes of nature in the form of acorns in the center of one design, and grapes and stylized ivy in another. In architecture the rinceau traditionally occupied the middle part of an entablature just below the cornice. In the cabinet it marked the boundary between the edge of the roof and the implied window below, tracing and marking the seam between ceiling and wall, and blurring the latent gap between furniture and architecture.

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Notes
1

Attendance gures reect the importance of the exhibit. During the time the Crystal Palace was open to the public, from May 1, 1851 to October 15, 1851, over six million visitors strolled through the galleries. See Bernardy, Albert and Victoria (1953): 218 and 219. 2 Semper, Science, Industry, and Art: Proposals for the Development of a National Taste in Art at the Closing of the London Industrial Exhibition (1989 [1851]): 134. 3 For a more comprehensive investigation of the relations between architecture and articial lighting see Schivelbusch, Licht, Schein, und Wahn: Auftritte der elektrischen Beleuchtung im 20. Jahrhundert (1992). 4 Semper, Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst, und andere Schriften ber Architektur, Kunsthandwerk und Kunstunterricht. (1966 [1851]): 34. In the original German version Semper uses the term Hereutik. Recently Gregory Ulmer has advanced the traditional notion of heuristics, a guide for invention, into a theory of method he calls heuretics. See Ulmer, Heuretics: he Logic of Invention (1994). 5 Semper, ber architektonische Symbole (1854 [1880]). 6 he cabinets frame shows a carving of the letters V and A in one of the construction drawings. 7 here exists another, more oblique connection between Albert and Semper. he Semper student Ludwig Gruner, whom Semper knew from his Dresden years, designed the mausoleum for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. See Rogasch, Victoria & Albert, Vicky & the Kaiser: Ein Kapitel deutsch-englischer Familiengeschichte (1997): 219. Winslow Ames has suggested that Prince Albert may have nudged Semper to write Wissenschaft, Industrie, und Kunst, pointing to the private encouragement [Privatauorderung] Semper mentioned on the rst page of his pamphlet. his preamble was re-printed only in the German version of Sempers text. See Semper, Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst, und andere Schriften ber Architektur, Kunsthandwerk und Kunstunterricht. (1966 [1851]): 27. Apparently, Albert also paid for a model Semper built of his unrealized design for the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria & Albert Museum). he model is lost and Sempers design was never realized. See Barringer, Die Grndung von Albertopolis - Prinz Albert und die frhen Jahre des South Kensington Museum (1997): 105. 8 Semper, Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst, und andere Schriften ber Architektur, Kunsthandwerk und Kunstunterricht. (1966 [1851]). 9 See ibid: 64 and 65. 10 See Jones, Owen. An Apology for the colouring of the Greek court in the Crystal Palace., 1854) and McKean, John. Crystal Palace: Joseph Paxton and Charles Fox, Architecture in Detail. (London: Phaidon, 1994). 11 Whewell, On the General Bearing of the Great Exhibition (1856): 12 quoted by Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century (1996): 197.

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See Runge, Zur Industrie-Ausstellung in London (1852): plate 13. While the table-cabinet provides an opening into Sempers Zurich work, it physically refuses to reveal its content. In a letter I received in response to a request for more information about the interior of the table-cabinet, a curator at the Victoria & Albert museum wrote back that the door of the cabinet is currently reluctant to open and that the V&A is in the process of dealing with this problem with the help of Conservation and the locksmiths. 14 his is true, at least, in the case of the original Crystal Palace which survives today only in the form of scale models, drawings, and photographs. 15 Semper was directly involved in the design of this interior. He designed several of the Crystal Palace exhibits, including the Danish, Swedish, Egyptian, and Canadian sections. See Ames, Prince Albert and Victorian Taste (1968): 93. 16 See Mundt, Das Verhltnis einiger kunsthandwerklicher Entwrfe Sempers zum historischen Kunstgewerbe (1976). 17 Ibid.: 324. 18 Frhlich, Gottfried Semper: Zeichnerischer Nachlass and der E.T.H. Zrich; kritischer Katalog (1974): 80. 19 Ibid.: 71. 20 here is a similar tripod on display in Schinkels Charlottenhof residence which is part of King Fredericks Sanssouci palace in Potsdam. 21 In a cosmogonic context the table-cabinet recalls the history of explaining the world through a diverse collection of stories, tales, and allegories. he table is to the cabinet what the ground is to the world. 22 Cuvier meticulously illustrated the encyclopedic specimen collections in the Jardin des Plantes. 23 See the Oxford English Dictionary CD ROM, keyword cabinet. 24 mes prparations sont expoes au cabinet dAnatomie compare du Jardin du Roi in Cuvier, Le rgne animal distribu daprs son organisation (1836-49): xv. 25 Between 1815 and 1822 Jean Lamarck created a new eld of biology called invertebrate zoology. In the late 1800s, as an assistant botanist under Buon, he became Professor of Natural History of Insects and Worms at the Jardin des Plantes. 26 See Semper, Der Stil (1860): I, 7 and 8. In his classication system Cuvier divided the animal kingdom into four branches: Vertebrata, Insecta, Vermes (worms) and Radiata (radially symmetrical animals). Within each embranchement the classes could be ranked from lowest to highest. he orders in each class could be similarly ranked, and so on down to the species level, with homo sapiens sitting at the very top of the scale of life. 27 he furniture piece recalls, with its two separate and joined parts, perhaps also some of the Swiss out-buildings with which Semper might have been familiar from his journey to Italy in the 1820. 28 See Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 345. here exist also many examples of furni13

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ture ornamented with architectural references from the mid-1800s. For example this collection of English cabinets from 1858-1862, from Joy, Pictorial Dictionary of British 19th Century Furniture Design (1980): 108. 29 he word emblematic derives from the Greek emballein, to insert, to set in, i.e. to inlay. 30 See Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 333. 31 Mundt, Das Verhltnis einiger kunsthandwerklicher Entwrfe Sempers zum historischen Kunstgewerbe (1976): 322. 32 Encyclopedia Britannica, search term cartouche. 33 he British Greek revival furniture maker homas Hope (1768-1831) designed some of the most beautiful lion-leg-equipped furniture. See Joy, English Furniture 1800- 1851 (1977): 46 and 50. Semper most likely borrowed the tables feet from a Pompeiian tripod chair he had seen when he visited Pompeii as part of his grand tour between 1830 and 1832. 34 he foot of a chair, for example, was designed as a foot of an animal, in order to express its standing upright and its mobility. Der Fu eines Stuhles wurde z. B. als Fu eines Tieres gestaltet, um das Aufrechtstehen und die Beweglichkeit desselben auszudrcken. Semper, ber architektonische Symbole (1854 (1880)): 299. In an earlier text Semper had also made a reference about the practice in ancient cultures to equip their mobile artifacts with the feet of animals. See Semper, Klassikation der Gefe (1884 [1852]): 32. 35 Any piece of furniture is inherently mobile. In German furniture is Mobiliar whose root contains mobile. 36 hat same tripod was also part of Schinkels design for the Charlottenhofin the park of Sansouci near Potsdamwhich is located not far from the Court Gardeners house that would become the precedent to Sempers design for the Villa Garbald. 37 Semper, Die Klassikation der Gefe (1884). 38 Since he could not travel to Saxony, given his most-wanted status, Semper probably saw the copy of Vischers sculpture in the casting room of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the same institution that today houses the table-cabinet. See Plate XXXIV and description in Physick, he Victoria and Albert Museum: he History of its Building (1982): 209. Semper also referred to Vischers Sebaldusgrab in Semper, Der Stil (1860): note 1, 588 and 589. 39 he tortoises appear to walk away from the cabinets centertheir heads are pointing outwardand with their arrested movement they cause a structural tension that provides a dynamic stability echoed in the stylistic eclecticism of the piece. 40 See Chevalier, Dictionary of Symbols (1996 [1969]): 1017. In German a tortoise is a Schildkrte, or a shielded toad. he word Schild, however, can also mean sign, i.e. the shield of the tortoise may point to something outside itself. A tortoise is an index. 41 here exist several types of myths: etiological myths explain origins or causes,

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fairy tales describe extraordinary beings and events, but with less authority. Sagas and epics sound truthful and refer to specic historical settings. 42 More recently Olbrich used tortoises under some mosaic-encrusted hemispherical plantersupside down tortoise shells reallyin front of the Secession building in Vienna. Years earlier, an anonymous designer used tortoises in the plaza in front of Albertis S. Andrea church to support an obelisk that appears ready to crawl away. 43 To equip means to supply with necessities, to furnish, and to dress up. And, of course, to equip derives from the Old French esquiper, of Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse skipa (from skip, ship). See Sisak, he American Heritage Electronic Dictionary (1994): keyword equip. 44 Today the cabinet stands in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which calls itself the worlds nest museum of the decorative arts. See the Victoria & Albert Museum website at http://www.vam.ac.uk/index1.html. 45 William Mulready (1786-1863) was known for his accurate depictions of everyday life in mid-nineteenth century England. For a critical analysis of Mulready see Heleniak, William Mulready (1980). 46 his state of viewing from a position in front of architecture, translates also into a temporal apriori condition in which the cabinet precedes proper architecture. Nevertheless the cabinet, as the cabin-et, i.e. a cabin+, is already more than a cabin. 47 Sisak, he American Heritage Electronic Dictionary (1994): cabinet. 48 he cabinet was usually isolated from other spaces in a house. Architectural cabinets were spaces reserved for work, privacy, and/or storage, withdrawn place[s] for working or for conversing privately, or for arranging papers, books or some other thing, according to the profession or temperament of the person living there. Pardailh-Galabrun, he Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris (1991): 63. 49 Koer means suitcase in German.
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Semper denes the Gestell as a collaboration of support and framework, in Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 247. 52 Erstens das Rahmenwerk mit der entsprechenden Fllung. Zweitens das Geschrnk, ein komplicirtes Rahmenwerk. Drittens das Sttzwerk. Viertens das Gestell, ein Zusammenwirken des Sttzwerkes mit dem Rahmenwerk, zu einem in sich Vollstndigen. Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 211.

Semper denes the Geschrnk as diagonal bracing, in Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 228. hat Semper thinks about furniture as well as conventional architecture (as building) is evident in his illustration to the chapter on the Geschrnk where he uses an Etruscan camp bed to show the woven character of Geschrnke.
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