Tag: classical antiquity

Classical antiquity may seem a far-fetched subject for someone who writes about design in the modern era but think about this: every product that is designed today has ancestry to it, which we call provenance in the design world. The shapes of furniture, the motifs used in furnishings and architecture, the combinations of materials identified so long ago that are still used today: so many of the examples in these categories had roots in classical antiquity.

One of my posts that makes such a strong point for the influence of the ancients is My Porcelain Bucket List. In it, I quote Eleanor P. DeLorme, the author of Garden Pavilions and the 18th Century French Court, who notes so many of the design narratives explored by the ancien regime in France were influenced by the ancient Greeks and Romans. “The banal statement has too often been made that the Queen and her ladies were ‘playing at being milkmaids,’” DeLorme notes, “but to see the preoccupation with dairies in these terms was patently absurd, as the Rambouillet Laiterie imagery bears out.” This is because the dairy was to provide courtiers with an experience on par with ones the ancients would have had when enjoying the milk, cheese, butter and cream they produced in their dairies.