The dressing table (also a vanity table or simply a vanity, [1] in Australian English, a duchess) is a table specifically designed for performing one's toilette (dressing, applying makeup and other personal grooming), [2] intended for a bedroom or a boudoir. [3]
The dressing table is one of the examples of a rapid change in terminology. Originally in the 18th century it was called a toilet table, or simply a toilet, occasionally toiletta. [4] However, as the American word "toilet" changed its meaning to describe a toilet bowl and became a vulgarity [5] somewhere in the 19th century, the term dressing table (that was in use earlier as well) had quickly replaced the toilet in the US, [4] while the British, with their lavatory, were able to keep the word "toilet" neutral [5] and to retain the toilet terminology for longer. [4] The word "toilette" comes as a French diminutive form of toile, [6] a cloth that from Medieval times was spread on top of a table prior to using cosmetics. [1] For some time in the 18th century American English contained a spelling variant twilight table. [6]
In the US, a term "lowboy" is used to describe a dressing table with multiple drawers made to match a tall chest, tallboy. [7]
One of the best visual expressions of a connection between the vanity table and vanitas was made by Charles Allan Gilbert in his All Is Vanity (1892). [8]
A combination of the writing desk and dressing table for the private space first appeared in the early 18th century in a shape of bureau on top of shallow drawers supported by the cabriole legs with toilet mirror above the bureau. By the middle of the 18th century Thomas Chippendale was selling buroe dressing tables that combined the dressing and writing tables with drawers without an actual bureau or built-in mirror. [9]
Adlin traces the history of vanity from the cosmetic box storage box known for a very long time (storage container for ointments, face paints, perfumes was excavated from the tomb of an Egyptian scribe Reniseneb, 15th century BC). [10] The renewed interest in self-adornment during the Renaissance created the étuis and the need for the tabletops to put them on. By the late 17th century the dressing table took its familiar shape. [11] A mirror became an essential part of the dressing table in the middle of the 18th century, it was either mounted in a rotating frame or designed to fold into the table itself. [12]
The dressing table reached peak of its importance and owes it to Marquise de Pompadour who changed the originally private toilette ritual into a morning reception. [13] The time of Marie Antoinette marks an appearance of a specially designed chair, fateuil de toilette, a predecessor of the modern barber chairs. [13] By the end of the 18th century "dressing boxes" on tall legs were designed for men so they can shave while standing. [14]
Dressing tables often featured dressing table sets, a collection of china, porcelain, glass, crystal, or metal objects and receptacles for tools or personal grooming products. These could include a comb, brush, hand mirror, perfume atomizer, buttonhook, powder jar, hatpin holder, a shoehorn, hair receiver and a tray. [15]
In the 21st century, with a few notable exceptions shown at the exhibits, the vanity tables are rarely produced and used; application of makeup occupies just a few moments in front of the bathroom mirror. [16] A new demand for dressing tables was caused by beauty influencers on the social media, their young female followers have limited space, spurring the creation of new compact designs. [17]
The vanity furniture set with matching dressing chair and table became an ostentatious display of wealth in the piece made by Nicolas Henri Jacob for, likely, Marie-Caroline, Duchess of Berry. This light-reflecting set is made almost entirely of the cut crystal and bronze, with candelabras depicting Zephyrus and Flora supporting a rotating mirror (the ballet Flore et Zéphire had just become popular). [18]
The evolution of the dressing table naturally followed the furniture styles. For example, in the 19th century in United States, the desks could be found in the English Chippendale style, as well as in a variety of revivalist stylizations, from Elizabethan to Colonial. [14] Charles-Honoré Lannuier, after moving to the US in 1803, established a popular "New York" style, mostly based on the Napoleonic one. [19] A brief reign of Art Nouveau freed the dressing table shape from the confines of tradition, yielding striking pieces by Hector Guimard, Louis Majorelle, and Antoni Gaudi. [20]
After an interruption of the First World War, Art Deco took over, with a showcase example of the dressing table produced by one of the leaders of the movement, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. His Colonette dressing table plays on the meaning of the toile with a cloth-imitating marquetry, made of ivory and ebony, placed at the center. [21] The Bauhaus modernists of the early 20th century with their clean, occasionally amazingly simple, designs, inspired American designers, like Paul T. Frankl with his skyscraper-themed tables with oversized (semi-)circular mirrors. [22]
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a Good Design movement in the US and Scandinavia called for stylish yet functional and inexpensive products, making the dressing table to become a reality for a middle-class home. For example, a combination writing desk and dressing table by Børge Mogensen (1950) reused the cover of the top drawer as a base of the pop-up mirror and the surface for writing, [23] returning to the concept of the bureau dressing table. In Ettore Sottsass' console and mirror (1965) the shaving surface for men no longer stands on the floor and is hanging on the wall instead. [24] After experiments with new materials in the 1960s and 1970s, the postmodernists like Sottsass and Michael Graves turned to revivalism, now combined with whimsical irony (cf. Graves' Plaza dressing table and stool set). [25]
In Japan, women did not use dressing tables, they were instead kneeling in front of the low "cosmetic stands". [26]
A pedestal desk or a tanker desk is usually a large, flat, free-standing desk made of a simple rectangular working surface resting on two pedestals or small cabinets of stacked drawers of one or two sizes, with plinths around the bases. Often, there is also a central large drawer above the legs and knees of the user. Sometimes, especially in the 19th century and modern examples, a "modesty panel" is placed in front, between the pedestals, to hide the legs and knees of the user from anyone else sitting or standing in front. This variation is sometimes called a "panel desk". The smaller and older pedestal desks with such a panel are sometimes called kneehole desks, they were intended for small spaces like boudoirs and were usually placed against a wall. The kneehole desks are also known as bureau tables.
A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk. Antique versions have the usual divisions for the inkwell, the blotter and the sand or powder tray in one of the drawers, and a surface covered with leather or some other material less hostile to the quill or the fountain pen than simple hard wood.
The slant-top desk, also called secretary desk, or more properly, a bureau, is a piece of writing furniture with a lid that closes at an angle and opens up as a writing surface. It can be considered related, in form, to the desk on a frame, which was a form of portable desk in earlier eras.
There are two kinds of trestle desk: as with trestle tables, some have trestles joined by one or more stretchers, and some have free-standing trestles. They can be dismantled, with the desk top removed from the trestles, for storage or transport.
A partners desk, partner's desk or partners' desk is a mostly historical form of desk, a large pedestal desk designed and constructed for two users working while facing each other. The defining features of a partner's desk are a deep top and two sets of drawers, one at each end of the pedestal.
The fire screen desk is a very small antique desk form meant to be placed in front of a fireplace to keep a user's feet warm while he or she is stationary while writing. This kind of desk was very popular in prosperous homes in Europe during the 18th century and slowly disappeared during the 19th, with the gradual introduction of stoves and central heating.
Jean-Henri Riesener was a famous German ébéniste (cabinetmaker), working in Paris, whose work exemplified the early neoclassical "Louis XVI style".
A Carlton House desk is a specific antique desk form within the more general bureau à gradin form. This form of desk is supposed to have been designed in the 18th century for the Prince of Wales by George Hepplewhite. It is named after Carlton House, which was at the time the London residence of the Prince, and sometimes is also known as a Carlton House writing table.
A commode is any of many pieces of furniture. The Oxford English Dictionary has multiple meanings of "commode". The first relevant definition reads: "A piece of furniture with drawers and shelves; in the bedroom, a sort of elaborate chest of drawers ; in the drawing room, a large kind of chiffonier." The drawing room is itself a term for a formal reception room, and a chiffonier is, in this sense, a small sideboard dating from the early 19th century.
A tallboy is a piece of furniture incorporating a chest of drawers and a wardrobe on top. A highboy consists of double chest of drawers, with the lower section usually wider than the upper. A lowboy is a table-height set of drawers designed to hold a clothes chest, which had been the predominant place one stored clothes for many centuries.
A table is an item of furniture with a raised flat top and is supported most commonly by 1 to 4 legs. It is used as a surface for working at, eating from or on which to place things. Some common types of tables are the dining room tables, which are used for seated persons to eat meals; the coffee table, which is a low table used in living rooms to display items or serve refreshments; and the bedside table, which is commonly used to place an alarm clock and a lamp. There are also a range of specialized types of tables, such as drafting tables, used for doing architectural drawings, and sewing tables.
A chest of drawers, also called a dresser or a bureau, is a type of cabinet that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers generally stacked one above another.
A lowboy is an American collectors term for one type of dressing table. It is a small table with one or two rows of drawers, so called in contradistinction to the tallboy or highboy chest of drawers.
The Antique Furnishings & Wooden Sculpture Museum of Milan is located on the first floor of the Sforza Castle ducal courtyard and it is part of the Sforza Castle's Civic Museum complex.
Jonathan Gostelowe was an 18th-century American cabinetmaker, best remembered for his Philadelphia Chippendale-style furniture.
The Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, was an Italian design and architecture group founded by Ettore Sottsass. It was active from 1980 to 1987. The group designed postmodern furniture, lighting, fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glass and metal objects.
A toilet service is a set of objects for use at the dressing table. The term is usually reserved for large luxury sets from the 17th to 19th centuries, with toilet set or vanity set used for later or simpler sets. Historically, services were made in metal, ceramics, and other materials, for both men and women, though male versions were generally much smaller. The rich had services in gold, silver, or silver-gilt. The contents vary, but typically include a mirror, one or more small ewers and basins, two candlesticks, and an assortment of bowls, boxes, caskets, and other containers. One or more brushes and a pin-cushion, often as a top to a box, are often included. The sets usually came with a custom-made travelling case, and some services were especially designed for travelling.
The furniture of the Louis XV period (1715–1774) is characterized by curved forms, lightness, comfort and asymmetry; it replaced the more formal, boxlike and massive furniture of the Louis XIV style. It employed marquetry, using inlays of exotic woods of different colors, as well as ivory and mother of pearl.
Louis XVI furniture is characterized by elegance and neoclassicism, a return to ancient Greek and Roman models. Much of it was designed and made for Queen Marie Antoinette for the new apartments she created in the Palace of Versailles, Palace of Fontainebleau, the Tuileries Palace, and other royal residences. The finest craftsmen of the time, including Jean-Henri Riesener, Georges Jacob, Martin Carlin, and Jean-François Leleu, were engaged to design and make her furniture.