Interior Designers Beverly Hills: Free Online Book Review
If one blindly believed the messages delivered from the advertising world we might be convinced that we lived in Label Land. Branding of products from the most lofty to the most mundane is clearly big business and the only bigger business involves the purchasing of all this Label-eze. Labels, however, are not new.
History is full of lessons that speak to the power of the visual symbol around which movements, armies and entire nations rally. Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815 by Odile Nouvel-Kammerer (Abrams) undertakes a viewing of the multiple visual cues consciously utilized by Napoleon in his conquests.
Once crowned Emperor he needed a symbol. Maybe an eagle, lion or an elephant he asked his political advisers. They suggested the symbol of France during the revolution; the cock. Napoleon replied, “The cock is nothing but poultry” and decided on the eagle with thunderbolts in its claws, a symbol of the Roman legions and Charlemagne.
Eagles appeared everywhere. In a design vernacular rich with masculinity (eagles on swords, eagles on thrones, thrones made of swords…etc.), a most interesting swath of imagery is decidedly feminine. One section of the book explores the decorative imagery of Psyche, the nymph who became the symbol of willful, inconstant femininity.
Psyche gave her name to the first full-length mirrors; it was the first time in history, we are told, that women could see themselves naked from head to toe. Psyche was also represented by the butterfly so we see insects of all sorts alight on beds, bowls and porcelains of all sorts, so much so that the Serves manufactory acquired its own collection of specimens.
A particularly beautiful butterfly settled on a bronze cup cast from a mould of the breast of Paolina Bonaparte, Napoleon’s favorite sister.
It seems that the imagery of Napoleon holds its power to captivate even today. There is something about label that does linger. For a more detailed look at the wide range of his influence on design and imagery, this is a very good read.
