unknown - Design for a salon wall - 1770-1790 - T-Shirt

This pen and grey wash elevation shows the front of a formal salon wall, organised around a tall arched mirror set between two white Corinthian columns.

Visual Elements & Composition

Warm grey and cream paper dominate the sheet, with charcoal shadows giving the architecture its depth and small touches of pale blue-grey and gold ochre picking out the mirror frame and medallions. The mirror sits at the centre, above a dark chimneypiece opening, while panelled doors with moulded frames sit beneath relief panels on either side. A deep entablature with a dentilled cornice and a foliage-carved frieze runs across the top, and a low domed element crowns the whole wall. The layout is strictly symmetrical, so the eye settles on the mirror first.

Meaning & Symbolism

The Corinthian columns, garlands, oval medallions and figural reliefs draw on the Neoclassical ornament that became fashionable in the decades around 1800, when the vocabulary of ancient Rome was adapted for interior decoration. The mirror reflects light and lengthens the room, and the symmetry of doors and columns expresses the formal order of a principal room in a palace or town house. Designers produced elevations like this one between 1770 and 1790 to plan the decoration of salons and state rooms, and this example is held in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Reading the Wall Across the Shirt

A wall elevation is a drawing meant to be read straight on, from the centre outward, and a front-facing tee suits that reading. The mirror lands at the centre of the chest, with the columns rising either side of it and the entablature sweeping across the shoulders. Wearing the design puts the room's formal order in front of you, one symmetrical wall at a time.