Fashion beyond Versailles: Consumption and Design in Seventeenth-Century France

4. Commodité: Comfort, Convenience, and Innovation in Furniture and Lighting

74 Commodité C O M F O R T S , C O N V E N I E N C E , A N D I N N O VAT I O N I N F U R N I T U R E A N D L I G H T I N G T he relatively brief period 1680–1720 was crucial in the history of French household furnishings because it witnessed the growing popularity and wider distribution of furniture designed for comfort and convenience. This is the period in which consumers began to acquire furniture not just meant to be sat upon but actually designed to promote bodily comfort. This included design changes in chairs, accompanied by the rise of the sofa and the daybed, improvements in lighting, and the introduction of other conveniences. By the end of the seventeenth century there was a growing demand for furniture that allowed “a greater degree of repose.”1 In France, the twin concepts of comfort and convenience were conflated by the term commodité, which was often attached to chaise or fauteuil to describe a particular type of easy chair that was in some ways the forerunner of the modern recliner. And by the turn of the century we find these items in homes not only in Paris, the epicenter of style, innovation, and furniture making, but also in more remote places like the frontier province of Dauphiné. Here innovative furnishings rapidly made their way into the households of noble families, suggesting a close relationship between cultural capital and imitative provinces. What was fashionable or state of the art in Paris soon gained sway over the imaginations and purses of 75 Commodité: Comfort, Convenience, and Innovation in Furniture and Lighting provincial consumers as well. The growing presence of more comfortable furniture and conveniences pointed to changing ideas of luxury—not the abandonment of the exotic and opulent, but a broadening cultural notion that included what by modern standards would appear as rather practical. Comfort was a new form of luxury that elevated the importance of the body in design circles and redefined the relationship between luxury and necessity. Comfort was also closely associated with changes in architectural design to accommodate emerging notions of privacy and intimacy. The idea that human physical comfort was a worthwhile goal was an early modern cultural construct. In the Middle Ages physical comfort was not a priority, and courtesy manuals addressed the issues of cleanliness and orderliness, but not the modern concept of comfort. John Crowley, who has written at length about the invention of the concept of comfort in the early modern period, points out that in the Middle Ages even the homes of people of means had very little furniture and seating.2 It was in the early modern period and especially during the consumer revolution that household goods proliferated, and by the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Europeans had turned more attention to furnishings designed for ease. Joan DeJean maintains that it was the French, specifically several notable French women, who inspired the modern home by embracing the design concept of comfort.3 How were ideas of comfort expressed in the period and what was meant by the terms confort, le bien-être, and commodité? The term confort retained its medieval sense and referred to a kind of moral quality of consolation until the mid-nineteenth century, when it assumed the more modern definition involving a physical state. It was the English who reconceptualized comfort, as they struggled with differences between luxury and necessity, to give it a physical emphasis. In the eighteenth century, however, physicality and the attendant emotional state of well being (le bien-être) were what the French meant when they attempted to express the abstraction later referred to as confortable.4 By commodité the French referred to utility, ease, and convenience.5 In talking about the rise of comfort, I am actually referring to commodité, and I have chosen to focus on items, that is, markers , that seem to be emblematic of this trend. Paramount among these is the chaise, or fauteuil de commodité. Fashion beyond Versailles 76 What could suggest comfort more emphatically than a chair that was accommodating, deeply padded and upholstered, often with wings, and in some cases engineered so that the head could rest by lying back and the feet be elevated? The term chaise or fauteuil de commodité was applied to the...