Date

• 1700s
• 1800s
• 1900s
• 2000s

Location

• America
• England
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Netherlands

Material

• Porcelain
• Silver
• Wood
• Works on Paper

The Continuing Curve: 1700s

In its original manifestation, rococo dominated French design from 1730 to 1765, during the reign of Louis XV. The king and his mistress Madame de Pompadour endorsed the rococo spirit, as it reflected their predilection for an intimate lifestyle and their love of extravagance. Rococo turned away from the constraints of classicism’s geometry toward nature for models, celebrating the tactile as well as the visual, the fantastical over the intellectual. Designers competed to produce highly original, eccentric, and exotic designs in silver, refined woods, textiles, and ceramics, all of which appealed to the senses and emotions. Rococo design ideas, transmitted by decorative-arts prints, objects, and the traveling designers themselves, quickly spread to England, the Netherlands, the German states, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and America.