Baroque works of carpentry in Austrian libraries

A catalogue of the baroque Austrian furniture has not been compiled so far; mainly because many Austrian aristocratic families had their castles and palaces not only in Vienna and in the surrounding area, but also in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other countries of the Habsburg empire. So aristocratic families often relocated, along with pieces of their furniture. Properties were bought and sold off again; this led to a dynamic blending of the interiors making it virtually impossible to track the origin of many furniture sets in private and public collections. Such items are of limited use when attempting to establish a history of furniture styles. It is therefore essential for any research to depart from sacral-monastic pieces of carpentry which, as a rule, were manufactured in close proximity to the site they are now kept at. For some years I have been studying such furniture, parts of the results of this work are available in a book which came out in 2017. Currently I am completing a second volume. Both volumes are concerned with monastic furniture and cabinets of sacristies and treasuries. They trace the history of sacral furniture, elucidate the living conditions of craftspeople, and address a lot of other relevant questions. The furniture and furnishings of Austrian monastic libraries still have to be studied in detail. Building the libraries presented the architects with a real challenge as the major monastic structures of the Benedictines, Cistercians, and Augustinians were predominated by baroque styles. The demands placed on the artistic design and workmanship were extremely high as can be seen from the magnificent frescoes and grand furniture. Despite all this, a general survey of furnishings of Austrian monastic libraries has not yet been achieved. A lot of sites have not been studied and published yet; some sites had their iconographic programmes resolved by specialists, but no attention was given to items of carpentry. And the few pieces of information we have need to be revised at least to some extent. The planned research project is based on the analysis of the monumental heritage still in existence as well as a careful study of relevant written source materials. Since the items of furniture permanently fitted in libraries could not be shuffled around, they are an ideal interface between sacral and exclusively profane pieces. These profane pieces then can ideally be examined in future studies against the set of well-established pieces. It will not be possible to grasp and appreciate local art of furniture making as a part of a central European phenomenon, until we have achieved a clear understanding of the regional stylistic variants of Austrian baroque furniture. The study will also provide new insights into, e.g. creative baroque designs of rooms, furnishings possibly typical of some monastic orders, and the development of major elements of interiors.

The provenance of many Baroque furniture sets in Austrian possession cannot be determined with certainty. Such inventory pieces are only of limited use for writing a history of the development of furniture, which naturally has to take into account questions about the origin of the cabinetmaker's work. There are also narrow limits when attempting to trace early modern furniture in Austrian aristocratic residences with the help of written sources. In this country, contemporary inventory entries about the interiors of castles, palaces and villas are usually so vague in terms of content that it is rarely possible to identify specific objects. And contracts with cabinetmakers, invoices or proof of the awarding of contracts can also only be related to specific pieces of furniture in exceptional cases. One way out of this awkward situation is to study sacred and library furniture. They are usually found in situ, and their design characteristics indicate regional differences and temporal peculiarities. The construction chronology of the architecture often provides additional clues as to the dating of the furnishings, and sometimes the monastery archives also contain archival records. The carpentry work in churches and libraries is therefore condensed into a reference system that will make it possible to compile catalogues of secular Austrian Baroque furniture. This was a desideratum of art history and the overriding aim of my research. The research project on Baroque libraries is the final part of a long-term study into pre-modern joinery in Austria. The first volume with sacred furniture from the east of the country was published by Böhlau Verlag in 2017, the second volume, which presents furniture from the other parts of the country, was published in 2021, also by Böhlau. The manuscript on library interiors, which was completed in April 2024, is expected to go to print at the end of 2024 with the title 'Die ehemalige Hofbibliothek in Wien und österreichische Klosterbibliotheken' as a special volume of the journal 'Barockberichte'. In the study, I not only describe the carpentry work, but also analyse it in connection with the architectural design of the library halls, which in many cases had a direct influence on the form of the bookcases and bookshelves. A by-product of the study was a book on the 'Alltag von Tischlern in der Frühen Neuzeit' (Böhlau 2024).