Baroque

Baroque is an exquisite language of forms born in an era of lavish splendor. Its patterns strive for movement: shells, scrolls, draperies, garlands of flowers intertwine as if music transforms into line. In architecture and painting, the Baroque ornament emphasizes the drama of light, contrasting luxury and shadow. In silver and porcelain, it becomes lace of metal and the gleam of glaze.

The Baroque master did not fear excess—it was precisely in excess that the sense of power and divinity lay. Such motifs adorned altars, mirrors, snuffboxes, carriages. In 18th-century Italy and France, craftsmen sometimes sought to outdo each other in elegance—it is said that one jeweler created a candlestick so adorned with scrolls that it could not bear its own weight. Baroque ornament is an art where every element lives in movement and strives for magnificence.