Vintage interior items embodied in their floral and floral motifs. Value style and shape.

Passing the gallery

A photo: Mikhail Stepanov

Text: Natalia Utochkina

Magazine: N4 (60) 2002

Antiques are not just antiques. It is a way to feel the times and styles, correlating the eternal with a continuous thirst for renewal. This is a way of life of a person involved in the magic circle of antiquities and rarities. Catherine the Great, a passionate collector of rarities, did respond to compliments by Diderot with discouraging sincerity: "I am not a lover, I am just greedy." Today, the haunter of antiques salons from Moscow to Colombo is a sophisticated and sophisticated individualist who creates a material history for private ownership. Antiques "mobile" in circulation. And while the national cultural heritage rests in museums, you can own antiques, you can sell and buy it. The love of antiques is selective and exacting. The buyer and the fan demands much more from an antiquarian thing more than from a modern product. The “dialogue” of interior and rarity is not suddenly formed, each “participant” has his own character and his own claims. The shape and material, color and texture of an old object are selfish and self-sufficient. Floral ornament on antiques, especially china, silver or small plastic, with all the refined and soft femininity has a tendency to some didactism. The logic of form development is always associated with the dictates of style. Baroque with its passion for lush multicolored flora captivates with a kind of respectable adventurism. Naive and pompous at the same time, the porcelain flowers of the 18th century combine fake luxury and touching fragility. Volumetric, round-shaped bright flowers correspond to the spirit of baroque redundancy: roses and once again roses, tulips and violets completely covered the surface. The fashion designer of Meissen Porcelain Manufactory adorned his products with small blue flowers, strongly protruding beyond the plane, and this innovation in technology and the extreme complexity of manufacturing made them famous all over the world under the funny and vague name "German Flowers". The refined floral motifs of modernity are inspired by the fluid plastics of lilies and irises, the favorite colors of the era. Myths about Hyacinth and Narcissus range from ballet to poetry. The range of ornamental vegetation of modern art ranges from the pastoral simplicity of forest and wildflowers to spicy exotic orchids. The fashion for flowers of elongated, elongated shape turned out to be surprisingly durable, being basically just a fashion for elegance. Extravagant floral compositions of modern style are invariably associated with good taste in the spirit of Oscar Wilde - his boutonnieres of gardenias or sunflowers. When gilded carving and mahogany are a daily routine, relations with eternity turn into the category of friendly relations. The reality of the timeless existence of a plant or flower motif embodies the very poetics and touching plastics of an ancient object.