Filing cabinet (cartonnier) (part of a set)

Joseph Baumhauer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This filing cabinet is made by the French cabinetmaker Joseph Baumhauer, who also created the matching writing table in the museum’s collection (1979.172.2). Known as cartonniers or serre-papiers, filing cabinets were separate pieces intended to be placed on the table. Decorated on the sides and top with floral marquetry, the cabinet is a trapezoidal structure with a slightly concave front. It rests upon four short tapering cabriole legs mounted with gilt-bronze mounts in the shape of scrolled acanthus leaves. The front two doors are fitted with wire mesh and open up to reveal seven compartments arranged in three tiers. Pierre Verlet has suggested that separate filing cabinets eventually gave way to the fall-front secretary (see for example 1977.1.14), a type of furniture that afforded greater privacy by allowing the user to lock away personal papers from prying eyes.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art