Music cabinet by Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott

Music cabinet

Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott

Before 1899

“The exterior decoration of the music cabinet is carried out in inlaid wood stained, and the lilies are of ivory, which is inlaid and slightly modelled in low relief. The metal work is in bright steel pierced, and repoussé, and is fixed on purple leather, which gives a note of colour behind the pierced metal work.” — Baillie Scott [his commentary continues below.]

New Palace, Darmstadt, Germany

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Scanned image and text by George P. Landow

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The music cabinet . . . gives some indication of the colour which forms such an important item in these designs, and in this connection the interior decoration may be particularly noted — the attention which has been given to what may be called linings.

There is, perhaps, no method of applying ornament which makes so much for mystery or suggests so much of the charm of hidden beauties. A cabinet with doors discreetly closed, externally of simple and perhaps severe design, gives no hint of the brightness of its interior till one opens a door and experiences that shock of pleased surprise which decoration has the power of evoking. And afterwards one never quite loses the consciousness of that hidden brightness of colour, and one never need get tired of it as one does of the insistent pattern of pronounced decoration which is always before the eye. — Baillie Scott

References

Baillie-Scott, M. H. "Some Furniture for the New Palace, Darmstadt." The Studio. 16 (1899): 91-98. Illustrated p. 112.

Last modified 10 May 2013