Furniture mounts

At the 1900 Paris International Exhibition, S. Bing's «Art Nouveau» pavilion exhibited the complete furniture of six rooms. The hall and the dressing room were followed by the bedroom, designed by E. Gaillard, the dining room and the drawing room by E. Colonna, while the sitting room (boudoire) opening from the dressing and the bedroom was installed according to the plans of Georges de Feure. Even the smallest details of the specific furniture or decorative objects were designed by the three artists. The exhibited mounts belonged to the furniture of the dressing room. Due to the comprehensive planning, a special harmony is reached by the similar decoration of the mounts and the silk wall draperies. (Surviving pieces can be found in the collection of the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, with Inv.No. 1900.362 (Cat. 1991b), and also in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.) Beside pictures taken of the interior, parts of the mounts are illustrated in Osborne 1900, pp.568-569 (the larger keyhole shields) and p.570 (two smaller and a larger drawer knob). Pictures of mounts identical with the exhibited ones are published by Hardy 1986 p.70. Together with these mounts, a chair from the dressing room interior (Inv.No. 5921) was also purchased by the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts.