Ooh là là… Rococo Design

No. 10  Favorite Design Styles

Like Roman compared to Greek – there is a sense of whimsy and an over decorative art for art’s sake quality to Rococo design.   Rococo is best associated with Louis XV where which it flourished (1730 – 1760) .

Rococo is light, feminine, soft, asymmetrical, curvaceous, and playful—a pendulum-swing reaction to the heavy-handed masculinity of the Baroque/Louis XIV period before it. Painting and sculpture is elaborate ornate, highly pictorial. Though the Rococo style eventually spread to England, Germany, Russia, Italy and the Netherlands, there is something about it that remains whimsically and quintessentially French.The style is based on ornate natural forms – like shells, the name Rococo comes from Rocaille French for Shell. 

Rococo fashion and its amazingly detailed and complicated decorative and flamboyant excesses for me and women alike.  A frivolity that was put to end with the French Revolution “off with their heads”. 

The period of French Rococo is marked by a departure of the orderliness of classical design by using free form and asymmetrical movements, C and S scrolls, cabriole legs, and motifs of plants, shells and flowers. Known for it’s frivolity, playfulness, lightheartedness and asymmetrical design.

  

Rococo Influence:  I love to use a few French rococo lines in design, although rarely do I incorporate more than a textile, pattern or accessory.  In 2009, I participated in the Family Tree Organization’s Great Chef’s Dinner the theme was “Paris in Paradise” with the idea based from the guest chef’s restaurant in Bermuda and he being French. I immediately thought of a French Rococo inspired Eifel Tower Sand Castle.  It measured over four feet off the table, made of carefully cut – mostly to scale cardboard pieces covered in burlap and plaster for  texture with additional plaster “c” and “s” curves, painted sandy tan and highlighted with gold metallic paint. Clusters of seashells adorned the structure. Brown sugar made my sand filled base and bright turquoise buckets with silver shovels dug into find more shell treasures. It was a fun interpretation of Rococo.