Close Looking: Mechanical Table

[00:00:17]I'm Miriam Schefzyk, and I'm Curator for Sculpture and Decorative Arts here at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

[00:00:24]At the Getty, we have an outstanding collection of decorative arts, but I have to say this is one of my personal favorites.

[00:00:33]Today, we are going to have a closer look at the “mechanical table” made by Jean-François Oeben in the late 1750s.

[00:00:42]What I do love about this table is its absolute elegance in shape and design.

[00:00:50]At only about twenty-eight inches high and fourteen inches deep, this table was destined to be placed in a more intimate setting.

[00:01:03]So its body is slightly curved.

[00:01:06]You can see here in the middle how it bows out, and this gentle movement is underlined by the raise of the lower edge framing the marquetry field.

[00:01:21]If you look closer, you see that the border line is actually composed of two lines, one in white made of holly and one in black made of ebony, and they are extremely thin.

[00:01:35]They also embrace these gilt-bronze mounts in their playful Rococo forms.

[00:01:41]What is remarkable to me is that the legs have actually five sides.

[00:01:48]You have two here at the front that are just separated by that line that comes out of the gilt-bronze mounts and gets thinner and thinner, and you do have three sides inside of the legs.

[00:02:02]Each leg ends in a very little, elegant gilt-bronze shoe composed out of scrolled leaves.

[00:02:10]Have a look at the top, with this wonderful flower marquetry.

[00:02:16]Made like a puzzle, every little element is cut out from a different wood, some of them imported from as far away as South America, and set together like a painting.

[00:02:30]But originally everything was much more colorful than what we see today.

[00:02:37]The stems and the leaves were green, and the flowers had a whole range of white, yellow, purple, and red.

[00:02:49]And this incredible tulip here was actually white with red.

[00:02:56]You can still see some of the color here in the ribbon that was in a dazzling blue, which also was in these borders, framing the composition.

[00:03:07]What I also love about this table is that it's very secretive.

[00:03:12]So you have here this little drawer, but you cannot access it.

[00:03:17]For this, you actually need this beautiful key that you insert here on the side, and that activates a mechanism.

[00:03:28]And the whole interior comes out, revealing two compartments on each side and a writing surface that can also be used as a book stand.

[00:03:45]So only now, when you activate that hidden lever, the drawer pops out and opens for you.

[00:03:58]Oeben created those tables for a very personal use.

[00:04:04]There was only one key for the owner that enabled him to fully access the table and to safeguard his or her private correspondence, his letters, and thoughts.

[00:04:17]Allowing that in a time where at court or for the high aristocracy, privacy as we know it today did not exist, is very touching.

[00:04:29]For me, there is something incredibly powerful about that link to a no longer existing world that this table offers us today.