Parisian Dreams: German Migrants and Cabinetmaking in Eighteenth-Century Paris

A Françoise and George Selz Lecture on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture by Miriam Schefzyk (J. Paul Getty Museum)

Paris has long been a privileged destination for many, but there was a particularly significant migration that began in the seventeenth century and gathered strength during the eighteenth century: that of German cabinetmakers. Hardworking and aspiring to wealth, recognition, and a better life, these numerous artisans made Paris into the most important center in the furniture and luxury trade of the time. Many of them rose to important positions as masters or leaders in the guild, and some even obtained royal privileges and titles. Their furniture was regarded as the incarnation of French taste and is still viewed as evidence of the supremacy of French decorative arts today. In this lecture, Miriam E. Schefzyk will examine the living and working conditions of these artisans and how their background as migrants significantly shaped the framework in which these extraordinary pieces of furniture were created.

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Bard Graduate Center is grateful for the generous support of the Selz Foundation.

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Miriam E. Schefzyk is the associate curator of decorative arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum and previously worked at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin. She studied art history at the universities of Marburg, Berlin, Münster, and Paris, earning a PhD in a joint French-German doctoral program. A specialist of French decorative arts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, her research focuses on Parisian furniture, artistic transfer, social history, and materiality. Her German book about migration and integration in eighteenth-century Paris, Martin Carlin and the German ébénistes (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022), was awarded the Marianne Roland Michel Foundation Prize for its important contribution to French art and will soon be published in French.