FURNITURE GALLERY IN VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM (V&A)
Read the text. For questions 6.1.–6.4., choose the appropriate paragraph and write the corresponding letter (A–E) in the table. One paragraph does not match any of the questions.
FURNITURE GALLERY IN VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM (V&A)
A. In V&A’s furniture gallery there is a delicate and prettily painted corner cupboard from the workshop of the great 18th-century cabinet-maker, Thomas Chippendale. Its provenance is well recorded. We know it was made between 1768 and 1778; its curvaceous front and slim legs owing something to the emerging taste for the Classical style, and its painted decoration a nod to a new, exotic taste for the Orient. We also know that it was supplied as part of a bedroom suite to the celebrated actor David Garrick for his villa on the Thames, a detail that allows us a peek into the most intimate life of one of theatre’s brightest stars.
B. Furniture is full of stories like this, a rich source of narratives that tell us about changing fashions, materials and production methods, as well as how people from different social groups lived. And the V&A has more than 14,000 such items in storage, which must have made selecting 200 pieces for its first dedicated furniture gallery extremely difficult. Those that made the final cut are arranged in a handsomely restored run of rooms, complete with shining parquet floor and a black-and-white colour scheme which, like the entire V&A these days, is so sparklingly lit and beautifully decorated it almost takes your breath away.
C. Many of the objects selected to illustrate 600 years of design history are just as wonderful. Down the centre of the galleries a catwalk show of around 25 remarkable pieces tells the story of European furniture. Among the highlights are a German chest from 1520 and a table owned by Napoleon. In side niches, seven designers are honoured with dedicated displays. The most interesting of these is devoted to Michael Thonet, manufacturer of perhaps the most successful piece of furniture ever: the No. 14 bentwood café chair which went into production in Austria in 1859. By 1930, more than 50 million had been sold.
D. The bad news is what the curators have done with the remaining 150 or so gems of the collection. These are grouped around the gallery’s sides and classified not according to date or style but by the techniques used. The problem with this approach is that it reduces these works, many loaded with the same kind of history as Garrick’s Chippendale cupboard, to the sum of their parts. We are unable to see how styles changed and progressed, or how movements such as European Modernism blossomed. It doesn’t help either that the curators have done away with labels, experimenting with interactive touch-screens for which you have to queue if somebody else is using them – why not have both?
E. All of this reminds me of the time when the Tate decided to hang its collections by genre, which resulted in the much-derided scenario of a Monet landscape next to a Richard Long installation. The Tate quickly backtracked. No doubt the V&A will eventually do the same, but in the meantime don’t be put off; the contents of this new gallery are five star, and it’s the contents that matter the most.
abridged from www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment
