Carpentry and sculpture from Gothic to Art Nouveau
First Edition of the new Annual Seminar on European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
The CFP deadline is 31 March 2025 at midday.
Hôtel de la Roche, Mons, Belgium, Saturday 19th – Monday 21st July 2024
A combined effort of the Centre de Recherches Historiques sur les Maîtres Ébénistes and the Low
Countries Sculpture Society, whose libraries and archives have merged and are housed in the Hôtel de la
Roche (1750) at Mons, the Annual Seminar will have its inaugural edition in July 2025.
The first edition wishes to address questions about the production, consumption, collecting and display
of “carpentry furniture” (in the Parisian sense of the expression) across Europe and North America, from
the gothic period to Art Nouveau. Issues of design history, collaborations between creators and
producers, artists and artisans, as well as the relations with any other people involved are sought.
Specificities of “carpentry furniture”, as opposed to other types of furniture design and production, may
be investigated. This includes the study of relations between carpenters and sculptors, as well as that of
historic sources, such as those published by André Jacob Roubo (1739-91).
Its theme will draw, amongst others, but not exclusively, on the rich tradition of carpentry in the Low
Countries, often in combination with magnificent sculpture in solid oak, particularly for church furniture,
and on the Parisian tradition for “meubles de menuiserie” (“carpentry furniture”), as differentiated from
“meubles d’ébénisterie” (“veneered furniture”) from the the 17th century onwards, as formalised with
separate guilds. “Carpentry furniture” included seat furniture, console tables, floors and wall pannelling
often with ornate sculptural elements, and always in solid wood, frequently painted and/or gilt, as
opposed to veneered furniture. Gilt console tables were a particularly respected product of the Paris
“menuisiers”.
Please send participation proposals with a 200-word abstract of the intended paper and a 200-word CV
by email to: info @ lcsculpture.art. We prefer to receive your abstract written in your mother tongue.
We will then have it professionally translated into English and French for our Scientific Committee. We
will inform of the Scientific Committee’s decision in April.
For full details, see here.