crystal palace semper table cabinet

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SYNOPSIS/BACKGROUNDOFA TALEOFTWOARCHITECTURES: JOSEPHPAXTONSCRYSTAL

PALACEANDGOTTFRIEDSEMPERSTABLE-CABINET

The following paper is part of my dissertation on a small selection ofGottfried Sempers designs that he completed in Zurich between 1854and 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 TALEOFTWOARCHITECTURES: JOSEPHPAXTONSCRYSTALPALACEANDGOTTFRIEDSEMPERSTABLE-CABINET

Figure 1: Left, interior view of Crystal Palace, redrawn by author, from McKean, John. CrystalPalace: 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 Revolutionund Historismus; Katalog zur Ausstellung Gottfried Semper zum 100. Todestag, die 1979 inDresden im Albertinum stattfand. (Mnchen, 1980): 328.

In architectural histories the Crystal Palace, which housed the International

Exhibition of 1851 in London, has occupied an arbitrary but neverthe-less significant hinge point in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its de-sign represents architectures shift from one-off, hand-made artifacts to theon-site assemblage of machine-made and mass-produced building compo-nents, following industrialization in the other arts and sciences.1

In the fall of 1851, just after the close of the exhibition, the architectand architectural historian Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) wrote a brief butimportant essay on the exhibits potential consequences for architecture.

Published as Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst: Vorschlge zur AnregungNationalen Kunstgefhles [Science, Industry and Art: Proposals for theDevelopment of a National Sensibility to Art], the essay revealed the broadscope of Sempers positions with respect to the development of the arts andtheir contemporary state in mid-century Europe. Yet the text exhibited,too, his difficulties to incorporate into the realm of architecture the very ad-vances in materials and construction technology that had made the CrystalPalace possible.

roughout history the influence of technology on architectural pro-duction has been profound. And yet, aside from a few exceptions, architectshave been slow to adopt latest technologies for their own designs. Semper isno exception. Fifteen years after workers used thousands of mass-producedparts to assemble the Crystal Palace, Semper still relied on manual stone


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cutting procedures, as evidenced in his design for a mid-size building likethe Polytechnicum observatory in Zurich. Although he wrote in his pam-phlet about the necessity of interaction among architects, manufacturers,

and clients in order to advance architectural production, Semper himselfseemed reluctant to move past conventional historicist architectural designsthat appeared to be more the product of one designer rather than a groupeffort of many professions.

And yet, his conservative insistence to refer to the past as an importantelement in design can be interpreted as a position in which the productionof architecture is not only dependent on the use of latest technologies butalso on historical and cultural foundations that tend to adjust more slowlyto new conditions.

In the post-Crystal-Palace period of the nineteenth century, the rela-tions between science and industry changed rapidly. Science until that timehad profited from industrial inventions. Now, with new developments inresearch and testing methods, science began to influence industry. Forexample, advances in metallurgy led Sempers predecessor Karl FriedrichSchinkel (1781- 1841) to use cast and rolled zinc extensively in his designsin the 1820s, both for ornamental railings of bridges, and in sheet form asroofing material. Sempers take was more nuanced. By 1851 he wrote with

both admiration and contempt about the ability of caoutchouc to mimicother, less adaptive materials: [R]ubber and caoutchouc are vulcanizedand utilized in a thousand imitations of wood, metal, and stone carvings,exceeding by far the natural limitations of the material they purport to rep-resent.2Semper would have seen these new technologies showcased in theCrystal Palace.

New advances in materials technology brought about a revaluationof the classification of materials. In his 1851 essay Semper developed a

taxonomy whose industrial logic could be extended into the logic of ar-chitecture. In his assessment of the exhibit Semper initially rejected twopossible approaches for a comparative overview of the exhibits content. Hesuggested that the first reading, a simple, linear description of the exhibitsartifactsbeginning at one end of the building and finishing at the otherresembled too much a method a guide-book would employ. He found thesecond choice, following the categories for a systematic evaluation handeddown by the Head Juries that involved a spatial compartmentalization and

subsequent sectioning into four divisions, a skillful plan. However, aftersome consideration he rejected both venues since they were limited byexternal and material criteria. Instead his interpretation of the exhibit con-sisted of a translation of Cuviers taxonomic systemcategorizing animalsnot according to their historical lineage but by cross-species relationsinto


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an advanced model of architectural education and practice. Translated intoarchitectural theory, this system would register a glass cup in the same cat-egory as a clay vessel because both are used for holding and pouring liquids.

For Semper it was only a small step from this reclassification of an existingsystem of everyday artifacts to a radical revaluation of the significance ofeveryday artifacts for the writing of architectural histories.

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

Rather than rely on unverifiable and narrowly conceived architectural

theories like the evolution of the temple from primitive hutsdiscoveredsupposedly by chance in a forestSemper located the tentative origin ofarchitectural generation in the instruments, tools, and artifacts with whichand around which humans have constructed their lives. Furthermore, hisfocus on the quotidian as both generator and transmitter of architecturecan be read as an attempt to undermine the implicit hierarchical relationsbetween high arttreated in official art historiesand a low or everydayart explored in such fields as anthropology or archaeology.

In those cases where architects had adopted new technologies, Sempercriticized their incapacity to use them appropriately. As an example for theuncritical approach artists or architects took in their work, he referred to theartificial illuminations exhibited in the Crystal Palace. He attacked the dis-appearance of facades in London behind the temporary gloss of pyrotech-


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even though this projected use would have been appropriate for the spaceof the Crystal Palace, Sempers design for the table-cabinet represented in-stead an inversion of the Crystal Palaces architectural characteristics. e

table-cabinet consisted of a panoply of different ornamentation and stylereferences that were countered on its interior by plain surfaces. On the otherhand, while the Exhibition building expressed a new era of highly controlledand precise mass-produced building technology with its repetitive patternof structural supports and vast glazing on the exterior, on the interior it rep-resentedby its very nature as an exhibition buildingthe eclectic disarrayof a nineteenth-century interieur, heightened by an Owen Jones-designedpolychrome dazzle that articulated the interior structural parts while simul-taneously letting them dissolve into the exhibition pieces.10

e joint that links both table-cabinet and Crystal Palace is theword cabinet, at least if we follow William Whewellone of the GreatExhibitions many criticswho called the Crystal Palace a magical glasscabinet.11An 1852 journal article indicates its surreal spatial adjacencies.Beginning on the western entry and ending in the center of the build-ing, the plan lists in sequence: two large mirrors, model of the Liverpooldocks, horse head with busts, Plymouth harbor breakwater, cliff of the Isleof Wight, model of Dundee, model of the state barge of the Lord Major,

fountain, models of the Dnieper-Brittannia and Chepstow bridges, modelof the Nicolai church in Hamburg, models of churches, telescopes, lanternfor light towers, Colebrookdale dome and eagle killer, Shakespeare, furs,marble fire place, Sheffield knives, fountain with drinking water, largeclock, chemical preparations, door frames, stone wreath, two posts, foun-tain, Rosamunde, models of viaduct bridges, opera house, mirror, memorialplate, Canadian woods, horse and dragon, silk cloth, eagle killer, Venus andCupid.12However, while the Crystal Palace revealed its apparently chaotic

interior at least partially from the outside, the table-cabinet resisted anyclear identification of its contents, as it reflected and distorted its externalcontext in the inset hemispherical mirrors and the polished silver inlay ofthe table top.13Both cabinets, however, mark the beginning of new phases ofarchitectural design, one literally in its use of new construction technology,emphasis on mass production, and fast completion; the other symbolicallyas a hybrid transitional device between Sempers early texts on polychromyand 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 heldthe potential to influence architectural production long after their physicalmanifestation has faded.14In architectural education the glass cabinet hasbecome one of the icons of modernism, making its appearance in survey


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courses as a corner stone of the theoretical building called architectural his-tory. A modernist mythology has been constructed around the significanceof the Crystal Palace machine-made mass-produced structural parts, at the

expense of its highly sensual, polychromatic interior.15

Sempers table-cabi-net, on the other hand, has so far existed in relative obscurity. In 1976 it ap-peared in one publication, and then only en passant, when Barbara Mundt

wrote on the relations between Sempers craft designs and the industrialarts.16Mundt suggested that the table-cabinet represented the coming-to-gether of elements of different styles in a new whole.17Following Mundt,Martin Frhlich mentioned the table-cabinet briefly in his collection ofSempers Zurich drawings,18but, in opposition to Mundt, he found it quitedifficult to evaluate, considering its non-unified [uneinheitliche] forms.19

Figure 3: Left, detail of the Table-Cabinet, from Mundt, Barbara. Das Verhltnis einiger kun-sthandwerklicher Entwrfe Sempers zum historischen Kunstgewerbe. In Gottfried Semperund 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 derArchitektur, Semper Archiv, ETH-Zrich.Right, detail of Tortoise support of Cabinet, fromDresden, Staatliche Kunst-sammlungen. Gottfried Semper, 1803-1879: Baumeister zwischenRevolution und Historismus; Katalog zur Ausstellung Gottfried Semper zum 100. Todestag,die 1979 in Dresden im Albertinum stattfand. (Mnchen, 1980): 328.

e term uneinheitlichpoints in this context to a transformative gener-ation, a shift of the table-cabinet into a monstrous object, i.e. a compoundof multiple, unresolved parts that do not fit together seamlessly (Figure 5).

e table-cabinet demonstrates its historical seams with its multiple originsthat can be located in Pompeian and Etruscan precedentsSemper bor-rowed the lion-legs, for example from a tripod he had encountered in histravels to Pompeii20ancient mythology, gothic sculpture, Renaissance ar-chitecture, romantic salon art, and Rococo details.21I would argue that this


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apparent confusion of styles can be rendered intelligible by an underlyingorder that is grounded in classification 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 ofscientific discoveries, the table-cabinet can serve as architectural evidence tosupport Sempers theoretical positions. Historically the cabinet as a build-ing type metamorphosed from the curiosity cabinets of the 17th and 18thcenturies into the science museums of the nineteenth century. In additionto the Crystal Palace and Sempers cabinet, there exists a third one, namelyCuviers museum of comparative anatomy, or the Parisian Jardin du Roi

which is known colloquially as a cabinetand names both the building andwhat it contains, i.e. a storage device that hold examples of plant and animalspecies.22In a fortunate etymological development, what we know today asa word for a piece of furniture began as a direct reference to an architecturalconstruction.

In the later half of the 16th century cabinets were tent shelters for sol-diers in the field as well as display and repository cases for valuable artifactsand specimens. By 1676 the display case had ballooned into a space for thearrangement or display of works or art.23And Cuvier described his workplace, the FrenchMusum National dHistoire Naturellefounded in 1626

as a royal garden of medicinal plantsas a cabinet.24Opened to the publicin 1650, this scientific cabinet quickly became a center of study for a smallbut influential group of botanists, among them G.-L.L. Buffon (1739-1788), the Jussieu brothers, George Cuvier, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck25(1744-1829).

Faced with the formidable task of ordering their collection of plantsand animal skeletons into a comprehensible system of knowledge, the cu-rators of the Jardinbegan to classify their specimens according to certain

characteristics. e evolving comparative method, a continuous refinementof what belonged together and what did not, attempted to make sense ofthe here and now by analyzing the past, in the assumption that the heri-tage of a species could be traced back in time, and then, through a kind ofreverse engineering of this linear process, forward into the present. Semperadopted both his systemic approach to architecture and the specific sys-tem of classification from Cuvier after visiting theJardin des Plantesin the1820s. In the introduction to Der StilSemper framed his task, not unlike

Cuvier had done earlier in the sciences, by dividing the technical arts intocategories and considering each of these categories independently, in so faras it was necessary to give proof of each categorys influence on the genera-tion of artistic symbols in general, and architectonic symbols specifically.rough this process of categorization Semper came to the conclusion that


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

Analysis

The table-cabinet can be divided into two major parts, a lower table andan upper cabinet.27e shorter bottom supports the proper cabinetwhich is equipped on the front with one hinged door that is surrounded bya coffered frame. Formally Semper adopted some of the table-cabinets de-tails from a modified French style that was based originally on architecturalreferences and elaborate ornamentation. For example, he mentions in DerStilsome Louis XVI furniture pieces that appear to be a forerunner to thetable 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: Baumeisterzwischen 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 rep-resentative pieces that signified emblematically through their inlaid andcarved ornamentation,29and Semper had praised the Renaissance practiceof using inlaid wood work in the Tektoniksection of Der Stil.30As Mundtobserved, the inlaid work around the center panel recounted the cofferedceilings and mirror frames of Renaissance interiors.31However, rather thanuse conventional architectural references like columns, gables, or temple

facades, Semper designed a hybrid artifact inspired by anthropomorphicanimal parts. He drew from some of those animalistic registers in the tablescartouches that are placed symmetrically around the drawer handle. is, inturn, connects to a sculpted lions head that might be interpreted to ward offany unauthorized users. e word cartouchedescribed in ancient Egypt an


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amulet worn as a protection against the loss of ones name (i.e., ones iden-tity).32e cartouche also characterizes the table-cabinet as an assembly ofdifferent pieces whose identity is blurred at the joints between the parts.

e lower table stands on four short dreidel out of which emerge, insome fantastic metamorphosis, four monstrous carved lion legs-cum-heads.Illustrations in books on early nineteenth-century British furniture depict-ed tables with hybrid lion leg-heads that had their origins in archaeologi-cal precedents from Pompeii.33e monsters terminate in an apron witha drawer located just underneath the table top. Here the table as tabula[tablet] is a mappa mundithat inscribes a theory of the world, of how the

world is seen from a geographers point of view; a view that de-monstratesa particular position. e table-top does not provide a direct support forthe cabinet above. Rather, four tortoises act as mobile intermediaries thattransfer the cabinets load to the table.

e lion-leg/head table legs can be read as a built reference to Semperstheory of structural symbols, not in the sense of an applied theory but rath-er as a rendering of theory onto practice. I am using the word renderinghere not in the graphic sense of depiction but in its old French meaning ofgiving 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 orconcrete, i.e. a process of transformation, and also a cladding of one mate-rial with another.

e decorporated lionsall feet and headwould then represent asymbolic narrative about physical mobility (feet) and intellectual mobility(head). In a lecture from 1854, contemporaneous with the design of thetable-cabinet, Semper explained, how, in the history of furniture, the feet ofa chair often borrowed their design from an animal in order to express the

animals upright position and mobility.34

e table-cabinets long s-shapedlegs appear to flex under the load of the upper cabinet, and articulate si-multaneously a natural legs tensioned position in a dynamic repose, readyto react with immediate flight or fight.35And yet, the long, flat, horizontalx-shaped binding that wraps around the four dreidel shackles the four legsand effectively prevents the contraption from walking away,36tempering thedesire 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 1850s

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Semper recalledfrom a visit to the British Museum a tripod on lions legs that were in turnsupported by tortoises which seemed to move along slowly and impercep-tibly. ere exists no image of this tripod in Sempers papers, althoughhe may have seen one of several tripods in the two major collections of


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Etruscan artifacts, either in the Villa Giulia or the Vatican, during his visitsto Rome. He referred in the same lecture also to Peter Vischers bronze castof the Sebaldus shrine in the St. Sebalds church in Nuremberg which ap-

peared to glide on a group of small bronze snails.38

Mobility

The upper cabinet rests on four silver tortoises that sitor appear toswimon a highly polished inlaid silver surface which mirrors the un-derside of the cabinet above.39If the cabinet signifies the world, this mir-ror reflects the underbelly of the world. e smooth plane functions as acalm ocean on which the tortoises appear as islands, recalling perhaps anancient creation myth of Native Americans. In Iroquois tradition a tortoisesaved the grandmother of mankind, who fell from the skybefore there

was an earthby catching the grandmother on her back. According to thestory a musk-rat then started piling dirt from the bottom of the sea ontothe tortoises back, creating the first island from which eventually grew the

whole earth.40ere exist other creation myths in which tortoises play acentral role as the originators and bearers of the universe. In these myths

the tortoises stabilize the heavenssignified by their domed shelland theearth, signified by their flat or slightly convex bottoms. In ancient myths atortoise also represents the materia primaof the work. It marked the startingpoint of development, the Ursprungor origin of the world.41In each casethe tortoises bodyoccupying the space between heaven and earthcar-ries the world on its shell.42

If the tortoises represent a mythical joint between a monstrous under-world and a human-occupied world above, the table-cabinet can be read as

a representation of the conflict between muthosand logos. e word mythderives from the Greek mythos, which ranges in meaning from word,through saying and story, to fiction.Mythoscan be contrasted with logos,a word whose validity can be argued and demonstrated. Because myths nar-rate fantastic events with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed thatthey are simply stories with no factual basis, and the word has become asynonym for falsehood or, at best, misconception. And yet, myths organizethe world not only of ancient civilizations but also of contemporary read-

ings of culture, as expressed in any artistic or architectural form, includingfurniture.In addition to mobile furniture, cabinetry-making is also the art of

beautiful joints. In defiance of classicist principles and in support of mod-ernist dogma to separate unlike functions from each other, Semper care-


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fully differentiated and articulated every part of the table-cabinet. His silvertortoises work in this case as a double joint. As amphibian monsters theydemonstrate an alternate version of classicist design principles where joints

between disparate parts are articulated rather than hidden behind smoothtransitions.e tendency of furniture makers to ornament their works with nauti-

cal symbols is already embedded in the word furniture, which derived fromthe Old French wordfurnirand describes necessary equipment43on a ship.Semper inserted other maritime references into the cabinet. For example,the edge below the cabinets parapet is a carved rinceau, an ornamental edgeapparently of liquid waves carved into wood (Figure 4). e parapet at thetop 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-likeornaments.

e mobility implied by the nautical references, the tortoises, andthe lion feet signify mobility without physical animation. And yet, theassumption that furniture, or for that matter, buildings, narrowly definedas structure, do not move is erroneous since any building, no matter howstructurally over-designed, experiences movement through oscillation, ex-

pansion, contraction, and/or vibration. And, of course, many devices thatare part of a building are mobile. In a shift back to the other cabinet, theCrystal Palace, it may be useful to remember that the buildings frame wasdismantled at the Hyde Park site and reassembled in Londons suburb ofSydenham, before it finally disappeared in a conflagration.

Frame

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

There exist two versions of the table-cabinet: Sempers design and thebuilt version executed by the British company Holland & Sons.44eslippage between Sempers drawings and their execution by the furniturecompany Holland & Sons is significant. Sempers projection shows a still

life in the door panel; the built version displays instead a picturesque land-scape that recalls Mulreadys Crossing the Ford from 1842,45 a literal andrepresentational rite of passage. e cabinet builders inverted Sempers de-sign from an interior still life to an exterior scene. Interior and exteriorhave exchanged positions. Nevertheless, against the empathetic tendency


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to pass visually through the frame, someone encountering the cabinet stilloccupies the space in front of the artifact. e in-front-of the cabinet canalso be read as an outside-the-house.46In ancient times the word cabinet

described a small or private room set aside for a specific activity.47

As anarchitectural convention, cabinets work as transitional spaces, and they areoften 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 [Wohnzimmeroder Stube] on the draw-ings of the upper floor of the Villa Garbald with the word cabinet.48

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

e table-cabinets single front door provides a tool to access the ori-gins of Sempers theories. In a parallel mode Cuviers cabinet in the Jardindes Plantesrepresents a particular position from which the natural sciences

provide the means to explain the history of the natural world. Transferredinto architecture, the framed, centered door panel provides a view into thecabinet from the outside. e frame appears to be a window. e paintedview offers a view through the frame, negating the cabinets depth. A cen-tered, i.e. a privileged, frontal view and only a frontal viewprovides theillusion of a coffered door, implying depth where there is only shallow relief(Figure 5). e physical depth of the cabinet corresponds approximately tothe apparent depth implied by the coffered frame.

In architecture, frames conventionally mark imagined or real passagesthrough walls. Frames suggest displacement or travel. e coffered framerecalls the German Koffer,49a piece of luggage through which one may enter,beginning with the frame, i.e. with the margin, with the device that holdsthe center from spilling out. For Semper the frame works as an apparatus


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out of which architecture could emerge in a sequence of layered relationsthat describe, ex post facto, the Crystal Palace.

First the framework with the appropriate infill. Second the diagonalbracing [Geschrnk50], a complicated framework. ird the support.Fourth the scaffolding [Gestell51], a collaboration of the supportivework with the framework to something complete in itself.52

For the space above the frame Semper designed a frieze or rinceauwhich is a decorative strip of naturalized ornaments. Roman rinceau of-ten consisted of an undulating double vine helix, growing from a vase.Branches, vines, and thistles were mixed together in Gothic rinceau, andin the Renaissance examples of tiny animals or human heads appeared asornamentation. Semper employed tropes of nature in the form of acorns inthe center of one design, and grapes and stylized ivy in another. In architec-ture the rinceautraditionally occupied the middle part of an entablature justbelow the cornice. In the cabinet it marked the boundary between the edgeof the roof and the implied window below, tracing and marking the seambetween ceiling and wall, and blurring the latent gap between furniture andarchitecture.


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Notes

1Attendance figures reflect 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 andVictoria (1953): 218 and 219.2Semper, Science, Industry, and Art: Proposals for the Development of a NationalTaste in Art at the Closing of the London Industrial Exhibition (1989 [1851]): 134.3For a more comprehensive investigation of the relations between architecture

and artificial lighting see Schivelbusch, Licht, Schein, und Wahn: Auftritte der elek-trischen Beleuchtung im 20. Jahrhundert (1992).4Semper, Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst, und andere Schriften ber Architektur,Kunsthandwerk und Kunstunterricht. (1966 [1851]): 34. In the original Germanversion Semper uses the term Hereutik. Recently Gregory Ulmer has advanced thetraditional notion of heuristics,a guide for invention, into a theory of method hecalls heuretics. See Ulmer, Heuretics: e Logic of Invention (1994).5Semper, ber architektonische Symbole (1854 [1880]).6e cabinets frame shows a carving of the letters V and A in one of the con-

struction drawings.7ere exists another, more oblique connection between Albert and Semper. e

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 Familienge-schichte (1997): 219. Winslow Ames has suggested that Prince Albert may havenudged Semper to write Wissenschaft, Industrie, und Kunst, pointing to the privateencouragement [Privataufforderung] Semper mentioned on the first page of hispamphlet. is 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). e 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): 105.8Semper, Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst, und andere Schriften ber Architektur,Kunsthandwerk und Kunstunterricht. (1966 [1851]).9See ibid: 64 and 65.10See Jones, Owen.

An Apology for the colouring of the Greek court in the CrystalPalace., 1854) and McKean, John. Crystal Palace: Joseph Paxton and Charles Fox,Architecture in Detail. (London: Phaidon, 1994).11Whewell, On the General Bearing of the Great Exhibition (1856): 12 quoted byMallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century (1996): 197.


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12SeeRunge,Zur Industrie-Ausstellung in London (1852): plate 13.13While 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 re-

quest for more information about the interior of the table-cabinet, a curator at theVictoria & 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 prob-

lem with the help of Conservation and the locksmiths.14is 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.15Semper was directly involved in the design of this interior. He designed several

of the Crystal Palace exhibits, including the Danish, Swedish, Egyptian, and Ca-

nadian sections. See Ames, Prince Albert and Victorian Taste (1968): 93.16See Mundt, Das Verhltnis einiger kunsthandwerklicher Entwrfe Sempers zumhistorischen Kunstgewerbe (1976).17Ibid.: 324.18Frhlich, Gottfried Semper: Zeichnerischer Nachlass and der E.T.H. Zrich; kri-tischer Katalog (1974): 80.19Ibid.: 71.20ere is a similar tripod on display in Schinkels Charlottenhofresidence whichis part of King Fredericks Sanssouci palace in Potsdam.21In a cosmogonic context the table-cabinet recalls the history of explaining theworld through a diverse collection of stories, tales, and allegories. e table is to

the cabinet what the ground is to the world.22Cuvier meticulously illustrated the encyclopedic specimen collections in the

Jardin des Plantes.23See the Oxford English Dictionary CD ROM, keyword cabinet.24 mes prparations sont expoes au cabinet dAnatomie compare du Jardin duRoi in Cuvier, Le rgne animal distribu daprs son organisation (1836-49): xv.25

Between 1815 and 1822 Jean Lamarck created a new field of biology called in-vertebrate zoology. In the late 1800s, as an assistant botanist under Buffon, he be-

came Professor of Natural History of Insects and Worms at theJardin des Plantes.26See Semper, Der Stil (1860): I, 7 and 8. In his classification system Cuvier di-vided the animal kingdom into four branches: Vertebrata, Insecta, Vermes(worms)and Radiata(radially symmetrical animals). Within each embranchementtheclasses could be ranked from lowest to highest. e orders in each class could be

similarly ranked, and so on down to the species level, with homo sapienssitting atthe very top of the scale of life.27e 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 1820.28See Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 345. ere exist also many examples of furni-


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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 Dictionaryof British 19th Century Furniture Design (1980): 108.29

e word emblematic derives from the Greek emballein, to insert, to set in,i.e. to inlay.30See Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 333.31Mundt, Das Verhltnis einiger kunsthandwerklicher Entwrfe Sempers zum histo-rischen Kunstgewerbe (1976): 322.32Encyclopedia Britannica, search term cartouche.33e British Greek revival furniture maker omas Hope (1768-1831) designed

some of the most beautiful lion-leg-equipped furniture. See Joy, English Furniture1800- 1851 (1977): 46 and 50. Semper most likely borrowed the tables feet froma Pompeiian tripod chair he had seen when he visited Pompeii as part of his grand

tour between 1830 and 1832.34e 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 des-selben 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, Klas-

sifikation der Gefe (1884 [1852]): 32.35Any piece of furniture is inherently mobile. In German furniture isMobiliarwhose root contains mobile.36at 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.37Semper, Die Klassifikation der Gefe (1884).38

Since he could not travel to Saxony, given his most-wanted status, Semperprobably 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, e Victoria and Albert Museum: eHistory of its Building (1982): 209. Semper also referred to Vischers Sebaldusgrabin Semper, Der Stil (1860): note 1, 588 and 589.39e tortoises appear to walk away from the cabinets centertheir heads are

pointing outwardand with their arrested movement they cause a structural ten-

sion that provides a dynamic stability echoed in the stylistic eclecticism of the piece.40See Chevalier, Dictionary of Symbols (1996 [1969]): 1017. In German a tortoise is aSchildkrte, or a shielded toad. e word Schild, however, can also mean sign, i.e. theshield of the tortoise may point to something outside itself. A tortoise is an index.41ere 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 specific historical settings.42More recently Olbrich used tortoises under some mosaic-encrusted hemispherical

plantersupside down tortoise shells reallyin front of the Secession building inVienna. 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.43To 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; akinto Old Norse skipa(from skip, ship). See Sisak, e American Heritage ElectronicDictionary (1994): keyword equip.44Today the cabinet stands in the Victoria & Albert Museum, which calls itself

the worlds finest museum of the decorative arts. See the Victoria & Albert Mu-

seum website at http://www.vam.ac.uk/index1.html.45William Mulready (1786-1863) was known for his accurate depictions of every-

day life in mid-nineteenth century England. For a critical analysis of Mulready see

Heleniak, William Mulready (1980).46is state of viewing from a position in front of architecture, translates also into a

temporal aprioricondition in which the cabinet precedes proper architecture. Nev-ertheless the cabinet, as the cabin-et, i.e. a cabin+, is already more than a cabin.47Sisak, e American Heritage Electronic Dictionary (1994): cabinet.48e cabinet was usually isolated from other spaces in a house. Architecturalcabinets 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 liv-

ing there. Pardailh-Galabrun, e Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life inEarly Modern Paris (1991): 63.49Koffermeans suitcase in German.50Semper defines the Geschrnk as diagonal bracing, in Semper, Der Stil

(1860): II, 228. at Semper thinks about furniture as well as conventionalarchitecture (as building) is evident in his illustration to the chapter on theGeschrnk where he uses an Etruscan camp bed to show the woven charac-ter of Geschrnke.51Semper defines the Gestellas a collaboration of support and framework, inSemper, Der Stil (1860): II, 247.52Erstens 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 sichVollstndigen.Semper, Der Stil (1860): II, 211.

crystal palace semper table cabinet

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