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The Rise and Fall of the Tablecloth
+++Musing on a Textile+++
+++Thomas A P Van Leeuwen+++
ISBN 978-94-93329-87-4
Price € 28.00
Author Thomas A P Van Leeuwen
Final editing Eleonoor Jap Sam
Design Joseph Plateau Grafisch Ontwerpers / Eliane Beyer
Number of pages 120
Book size 17 x 23.5 cm
Binding hardcover
Language English
Printer t.b.d
Release date Autumn / Winter 206
Imprint publisher Les Éditions du Malentendu, www.malentendueditions.nl
Les Éditions du Malentendu is an imprint of Jap Sam Books. The Foundation 'Les Éditions du Malentendu' publishes studies in the field of art and culture that are of an outspoken artistic and scholarly inspiration, but for which no immediate commercial interest is offered. Yet the work should be of such global urgency that the world is thrilled with expectation.
+++
The Rise and Fall of the Tablecloth: Musings on a Textile offers a light-footed, richly illustrated journey through the evolution of the tablecloth.
For centuries, the tablecloth occupied a central place in households of every social class, from the poorest farmers to the wealthiest princes and prelates. It served families as a point of stability and unity while also providing a theatrical stage for celebrations and ceremonial banquets. The simple white linens of taverns and restaurants invited guests to eat, converse, and flirt. The unifying and seductive power of the tablecloth has always been so compelling that it creates a space of its own—a magic circle, vividly embodied in the tradition of the picnic and in the many erotically charged déjeuners sur l’herbe.
The study further explores the tablecloth’s role in medieval court culture and its surprising appearances across music, architecture, and painting. Polyphony and the painterly art of drapery reveal striking affinities, while unexpected connections emerge between table linens and cartography. Even in the earliest experiments in photography, the tablecloth appears as a prominent element of the composition.
At the heart of this unabashedly associative study is the tablecloth’s place in the imagery of Christian devotion, above all as the cloth of the Last Supper. Even more remarkable is its relationship to its sister textile, the Holy Shroud, whose authenticity and significance continue to provoke passionate debate.
Ultimately, the narrative traces the decline of the tablecloth in contemporary dining culture—a decline that reflects a broader cultural transformation marked by the erosion of communal life and an increasing retreat into individualism.
About the author: Thomas A P Van Leeuwen was professor of architectural history, cultural history and art criticism at Leiden University and at The Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, for many years. He had done research and taught at various post-graduate schools in Europe and the United States. He was Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, Harkness and Fulbright Fellow and Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington DC.
Van Leeuwen’s approach to architectural history is mildly idiosyncratic. Contrary to regular practice, the Van Leeuwen method first strips down the architectural object to its smallest possible particle and then fans out to the widest possible ramifications. The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool (1998) started off in architecture’s atomic beginnings as a simple hole in the ground in order to culminate in excursive explorations into man’s conflicting attitudes toward water. Columns of Fire: The Un-doing of Architecture, the third volume, largely published as articles in ea. Cabinet Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine and Hunch, describes architecture’s passionate relationship with fire. Fire the builder-Fire the destroyer. The London Reform Club House is part of this volume, since it was the first semi-public building in the United Kingdom to be constructed of fire-proof construction. That its kitchens were fired by ultra modern gas cooking ranges was not only an unprecedented improvement, but also a demonstration of the fact that the element Fire has two opposite characters. As an enthusiastic Reformer, Van Leeuwen had access to the building’s entrails where he found traces of its smallest common denominator, a one-horse-power steam engine that drove its cooking and ventilation works.
Thomas A P Van Leeuwen’s books also include a historical analysis of the contradictory ascent of the tall building The Skyward Trend of Thought: Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper (1986). These studies are part of a tetralogy with each volume centred on the relationship between architecture and one of the classical elements: Air, Water, Fire and Earth. The last volume deals with Earth: The Thinking Foot: A Pedestrian View of Architecture, an inquiry into the undervalued qualities of Surface, demonstrated by a history of paving and the various consequences of hard superficiality.
Other publications by Les Éditions du Malentendu:
Musing on a Textile
€28.00
The Rise and Fall of the Tablecloth
Musing on a Textile
€28.00
Architecture / Art / Design / Theory / Upcoming
ISBN 978-94-93329-87-4
Price € 28.00
Author Thomas A P Van Leeuwen
Final editing Eleonoor Jap Sam
Design Joseph Plateau Grafisch Ontwerpers / Eliane Beyer
Number of pages 120
Book size 17 x 23.5 cm
Binding hardcover
Language English
Printer t.b.d
Release date Autumn / Winter 206
Imprint publisher Les Éditions du Malentendu, www.malentendueditions.nl
Les Éditions du Malentendu is an imprint of Jap Sam Books. The Foundation 'Les Éditions du Malentendu' publishes studies in the field of art and culture that are of an outspoken artistic and scholarly inspiration, but for which no immediate commercial interest is offered. Yet the work should be of such global urgency that the world is thrilled with expectation.
The Rise and Fall of the Tablecloth: Musings on a Textile offers a light-footed, richly illustrated journey through the evolution of the tablecloth.
For centuries, the tablecloth occupied a central place in households of every social class, from the poorest farmers to the wealthiest princes and prelates. It served families as a point of stability and unity while also providing a theatrical stage for celebrations and ceremonial banquets. The simple white linens of taverns and restaurants invited guests to eat, converse, and flirt. The unifying and seductive power of the tablecloth has always been so compelling that it creates a space of its own—a magic circle, vividly embodied in the tradition of the picnic and in the many erotically charged déjeuners sur l’herbe.
The study further explores the tablecloth’s role in medieval court culture and its surprising appearances across music, architecture, and painting. Polyphony and the painterly art of drapery reveal striking affinities, while unexpected connections emerge between table linens and cartography. Even in the earliest experiments in photography, the tablecloth appears as a prominent element of the composition.
At the heart of this unabashedly associative study is the tablecloth’s place in the imagery of Christian devotion, above all as the cloth of the Last Supper. Even more remarkable is its relationship to its sister textile, the Holy Shroud, whose authenticity and significance continue to provoke passionate debate.
Ultimately, the narrative traces the decline of the tablecloth in contemporary dining culture—a decline that reflects a broader cultural transformation marked by the erosion of communal life and an increasing retreat into individualism.
About the author: Thomas A P Van Leeuwen was professor of architectural history, cultural history and art criticism at Leiden University and at The Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, for many years. He had done research and taught at various post-graduate schools in Europe and the United States. He was Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, Harkness and Fulbright Fellow and Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington DC.
Van Leeuwen’s approach to architectural history is mildly idiosyncratic. Contrary to regular practice, the Van Leeuwen method first strips down the architectural object to its smallest possible particle and then fans out to the widest possible ramifications. The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool (1998) started off in architecture’s atomic beginnings as a simple hole in the ground in order to culminate in excursive explorations into man’s conflicting attitudes toward water. Columns of Fire: The Un-doing of Architecture, the third volume, largely published as articles in ea. Cabinet Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine and Hunch, describes architecture’s passionate relationship with fire. Fire the builder-Fire the destroyer. The London Reform Club House is part of this volume, since it was the first semi-public building in the United Kingdom to be constructed of fire-proof construction. That its kitchens were fired by ultra modern gas cooking ranges was not only an unprecedented improvement, but also a demonstration of the fact that the element Fire has two opposite characters. As an enthusiastic Reformer, Van Leeuwen had access to the building’s entrails where he found traces of its smallest common denominator, a one-horse-power steam engine that drove its cooking and ventilation works.
Thomas A P Van Leeuwen’s books also include a historical analysis of the contradictory ascent of the tall building The Skyward Trend of Thought: Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper (1986). These studies are part of a tetralogy with each volume centred on the relationship between architecture and one of the classical elements: Air, Water, Fire and Earth. The last volume deals with Earth: The Thinking Foot: A Pedestrian View of Architecture, an inquiry into the undervalued qualities of Surface, demonstrated by a history of paving and the various consequences of hard superficiality.
Other publications by Les Éditions du Malentendu:
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