Design for Altar and Chapel, Farnborough 1880 - 1886

Curator: We're looking at "Design for Altar and Chapel, Farnborough," an architectural rendering from sometime between 1880 and 1886. It's currently housed here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: Immediately I’m struck by its serenity. The delicate watercolors give it such a soft, ethereal quality. It’s the color of whispers. Curator: Absolutely. I get a strong sense of reverence. Lachaise really knew how to build a world with humble pencil, print, and watercolor. Editor: The architecture itself, those grand gothic windows, wouldn’t be out of place in the medieval period. You almost wouldn’t notice how labor-intensive the actual making of the stained glass windows were, not to mention the time devoted to drawing such detail, which is now just decorative. Curator: Right. And I imagine this was all very much meant to impress, given the almost gaudy adornments crowning the whole thing. The crown, coat of arms, fluttering ribbons... it’s almost aggressively opulent! But it doesn't overwhelm. It complements. Editor: Absolutely. It strikes me, though, that Lachaise has flattened the picture space, really focusing on surface decoration. It’s less about spatial depth, and more about the layers of design applied to a two-dimensional space. What statement does that approach convey to you? Curator: It certainly creates a sense of... removal. Like viewing devotion from behind a pane of glass, quite literally. And even though it’s only a proposal on paper, it evokes the many levels of planning, skilled work, the various economies, that go into designing for worship. I imagine commissioning this room would be the ultimate devotion in itself, and the final version would speak for its own creation in a grand church. Editor: True. This is a fascinating meditation on what goes into the experience of designing for devotion. Seeing the artwork makes you want to meditate and understand. I like the quiet it gives.