Carlton Hobbs 9013

January 15 2010, 5:44pm

Term of the Day: Grotesque 1/15/10

Detail of an early rococo carved and painted rotating armchair.

A grotesque is an ornamental object or painted decoration with a fantastic form that combines human, animal, and plant features. The name refers to the “grottos” where grotesque forms were rediscovered in the late 15th century: these were the buried rooms of the Roman emperor Nero’s Golden House, where frescoes of fantastic creatures covered the walls. These images remained popular for centuries, and were imitated in Italian majolica, and in the designs of Jean Bérain and André-Charles Boulle in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Grotesques are therefore closely associated with arabesques, which also feature in Bérainesque and Boulle designs, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, though arabesques should properly be considered designs deriving from Islamic influence.

To see more of this armchair, visit: http://www.carltonhobbs.com/viewDetail.asp?strReference=9013