Baroque furnishing in Austrian churches

Restrictive limits are set to the study of Austrian Baroque furnishings. Until today there is not a single catalogue with pieces of comparison that would facilitate the task of both dating furniture more accurately and relating it to certain geographical regions. Such pieces, however, are most likely to be found in religious foundations. Therefore it is reasonable to proceed from church-related furniture to the secular furniture. In the past few years I have carried out research on the furniture in the abbeys of the Benedictine and Cistercian orders with the financial funding of the FWF. Since their abbeys are situated in the rural areas in the east and north of Austria it now seems necessary to make a second step and provide the research with a larger base so as to achieve the main objective of setting up a framework which meets commonly accepted scientific standards. Important furnishings of churches like those in Vienna, Salzburg, Graz and Klagenfurt must also be included in the research. Apart from the study of the furniture an important element of my research is the analysis and interpretation of documentary evidence found in archives of churches and abbeys. Any such sources are of interest with regard to the production of furniture but they may also yield new insights into the working conditions of carpenters. The written records will enable us to create a vivid picture of Austrian craftsmen of the Baroque era. The methods and approach proposed will raise the quality of the investigation of Austrian Baroque furniture. With the inclusion of social and economic problems the project will attain the scientific standard commonly applied in studies of furniture.

The study of baroque works of Austrian carpentry has been carried out within a fairly limited scope given the fact that to date there is no catalogue containing pieces of reference that would make possible the determination of the exact age as well as the attribution to certain regions. In fact, there is a sad lack of comprehensive studies on pieces of carpentry of certifiable date and origin. Such pieces of furniture are mainly found in ecclesiastical environments. The study based on previous research funded by the FWF and will bring to the fore relevant ecclesiastical furniture. In recent years, a selection of pieces of carpentry of 40 monasteries and world churches situated in Lower Austria, Vienna, and Upper Austria was established. The results of the subsequent examinations were summed up in an extensive manuscript to be published by Böhlau Verlag in Vienna. The first part of the publication expands on the historical development of church furniture and stylistic features of the several items. The second section contains an extensive catalogue on the relevant sets of furniture. Apart from efforts to contextualise artefacts as much as possible, the evaluation of documentary evidence hidden away in all kinds of archives has been another main thrust of my studies. In conjunction with this project, such documentation is apt to hugely facilitate the appreciation of a piece of furniture; and, what is even more, provide information on the guilds, the craftsmen, their lives and working conditions. All of this will eventually help us to sharpen our conception of carpenters and their workshops in the baroque era. An approach based on the scope and methods as applied to this study will enable us for the first time to produce a detailed survey of the Austrian stock of baroque furniture and furnishings. Sociological, historical, and economic issues have been addressed wherever possible to comply with the international standards of scientific output on the history of furniture.