The Rundāle Palace Museum’s Calendar for 2023 is dedicated to the practical commodes (French commode – convenient, fit for purpose) or chests of drawers, popular for many centuries, whose heyday is considered to be the 18th century. The Calendar brings together the most striking examples from the Museum’s collection, demonstrating the craftsmanship of the artisans and showing a wide range of styles, from the Italian Renaissance to Historicism.
The Calendar can be purchased at the Museum’s ticket office or ordered by e-mail biblioteka@rundale.net. The price of the Calendar is 5.50 EUR; excluding shipping costs. The description in the introduction and the annotations of the images are available in two languages – Latvian and English.
The earliest item included in the Calendar is a walnut chest of drawers with carvings, made in Italy in the late Renaissance style at the beginning of the 17th century, which entered the Museum’s collection as early as 1977. Another interesting piece of furniture is an early Baroque chest of drawers made in Holland at the end of the 17th century, the front and sides of which are decorated with inlaid floral motifs, while the surface depicts scenes from the lives of travelling actors. A particularly precious object is a chest of drawers made in the 1880s by Jean-Henri Riesener, the most famous cabinetmaker of King Louis XVI of France: its leaf panels are made from finished Japanese lacquer panels decorated with a landscape painting in silver and gold.
The photographs selected for the Calendar show not only the chests of drawers in the palace interiors, but also enlarged fragments, allowing a close-up view of interesting details – bronze fittings, marquetry, lacquer paintings, etc. The Rundāle Palace Museum displays the chests of drawers both in the main exposition and in the exhibition “From the Gothic Style to Art Nouveau”, which is dedicated to the history of styles.
The Rundāle Palace Museum’s desk calendar has been published since 2014, focusing on a different theme each year. The calendars of recent years highlight different groups of objects from the collection: porcelain perfume vases, chandeliers, paintings of floral still life, fans and clocks.