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for example, to make of each house a Gesamtkunstwerk, a totalized work of art in which a teapot is as indispensable and resonant as a column. I think of an illustration first pointed out to me by Juliet Kinchin, the frontispiece of Clarence Cook's 1878 treatise, The House Beautiful: Essays on Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks. In it a woman in Aesthetic Movement dress pours tea at a table carefully set before a Delft-tiled hearth, blue and white plates on the mantelpiece. There is a slender, ebonized William Morris-like chair in the foreground; the silver teapot is fluted. Cook's image provokes still deeper musings: is the woman muse, mistress or orchestrator of this interior, perhaps all three? Freud's teacher on the subject of female hysteria, the physician Charcot, as documented by historian Deborah L. Silverman in Art Nouveau in Fin-de-siecle France: Politics, Psychology and Style, was an avid interior decorator, engaging his entire family, particularly its female members, in the activity: "Surrounded by their own creations, the family bonds were encrusted in the very walls and material objects of daily use. The interior was charged with powerfully personal meanings. 'This artistic project,' wrote Charcot, 'this ensemble,' is 'a chez soi of the dream wherein everything is precious, where every object calls out… This splendid residence…is charged with such beautiful Previous two pages in order: Eileen Gray (British, born Ireland. 1879-1976). Screen. 1922. Lacquered wood and metal rods. Mfr.: Eileen Gray Workshop, Paris. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. HYLAND