Not your typical high-end rococo writing desk. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

New York

At first glance it's a typical high-end rococo desk, its swanlike cabriole legs and paneled sides aglitter with gilt-bronze mounts, its surfaces alive with delicately painted scenes of temples, ruins and a complete throne room inhabited by angels and classical statuary. Atop the desk rises a cupola painted with an elaborate princely crest. As you look more closely, however, you realize that all the "painting" is actually marquetry, composed of thousands of meticulously cut and inlaid pieces of varicolored woods accented with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl and delicate inlaid sheets of brass, copper and silver, all engraved and textured.

But the magic is not just skin-deep. As a nearby video shows, the desk's slant-top opens to reveal a sliding secretary inside, its drawers, sliding trays, gilt-bronze inkwell and sand cup inlaid with geometric patterns in tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. Everywhere, hidden buttons, levers and key-operated mechanisms trigger hidden side trays, pop-up easels, secret drawers concealing further secret drawers. The cupola's panel revolves to reveal a niche for a precious devotional object. Finally, a large hidden panel descends from the kneehole to become a prie-dieu—for the owner to kneel on in prayer. Thus this elaborate writing desk could transform itself into the private chapel of Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp von Walderdorf (1701-1768), who commissioned it.

Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture Of the Roentgens
Metropolitan Museum of Art Through Jan. 27

This isn't just cabinetry; it's theatre—the opulent, technical theater of Abraham Roentgen (1711-1793) and his son David (1743-1807), two of the 18th-century's outstanding cabinetmakers. "Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the first comprehensive survey of this German partnership's legacy. Included are some 60 desks, bureaus, cabinets, multifunctional tables and seating pieces, as well as several astounding musical clocks and automata, many of which have never before left European museums and private collections.

To view these enchanting productions is to understand why the Roentgens enjoyed commissions from France's King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm II, Russia's Empress Catherine the Great and other sovereign princes.

Having established, in 1742, a small cabinetry workshop near Frankfurt, Abraham Roentgen quickly progressed from making everyday furniture to elegantly veneered tea chests, gaming tables and other display pieces in the Queen Anne style he had learned in the Netherlands and England. As the local aristocracy took notice of his exceptional work, his business flourished, and after he opened a larger factory at Neuwied, where his increasingly Gallicised design vocabulary emphasized carving, marquetry inlay and beguiling mechanical features, royalty competed to possess his work.

An animated sofa Roentgen made for Walderdorff around 1762-64 gives ample proof of his mastery. Though its overall shape is adapted from English designs, this is far from your usual Chippendale camelback. With six curved legs realistically carved as horses hooves, replete with hirsute fetlocks, and boldly carved volutes terminating the armrests like coiled tentacles, this zoomorphic seat seems poised to engage the sitter in a test of strength. Wonderfully figured veneers are inlaid with delicate birch marquetry designs showing picturesque ruins, fountains, allegorical scenes and curvaceous rococo motifs, subtly shaded with stain and colored washes to create what the Roentgens called peintre en bois (literally, painting in wood), a process Abraham invented. Certainly this is not furniture for constitutional monarchs but for those who considered themselves absolute rulers by divine right.

Roentgen's son David, who took over the firm by 1768, eventually employed more than 130 specialist craftsmen. Until the luxury market slumped during the French Revolution, his inventiveness and virtuosity seemed boundless—lady's writing desks turn themselves into dressing tables; a delicate side table boasting immaculate floral inlay unfolds into a thoroughly practical architect's drawing board.

The grandest, most complex of the younger Roentgen's works is surely the architectonic secretary cabinet (1778-79) made for King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, on loan for the first time from the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum. Nearly 12 feet tall, a gilt-bronze statue of Apollo crowning its domed clock tower, it is a magnificent example of Neoclassicism deluxe. Outside are marquetry tableaux symbolizing the liberal arts. Inside, a central niche is fitted out like a miniature drawing room, with trompe l'oeuil mirrors and furniture executed in shaded inlay. Spring-loaded panels, doors and drawers slide open smoothly and gently, bespeaking the precision with which Roentgen and his engineers calculated the force of each piece of spring steel and lead counterweight against the resistance of each moving part. And the eight-day calendar-clock not only tells the phases of the moon, but every two hours plays from a selection of eight duets on a concealed dulcimer and bellows-blown flute, operated by a double-cylinder music box. No less a musician than Christoph Willibald von Gluck, composer of the opera "Orfeo ed Euridice," wrote pieces for several of Roentgen's musical clocks.

Nearby is another techno-musical masterpiece, the c. 1782-84 automaton of Queen Marie Antoinette, its former owner, playing Gluck's music on a hammered dulcimer. Elegantly coiffed and bejeweled, the android moves her head, eyes, shoulders and arms naturalistically as she strikes the dulcimer's strings with tiny hammers.

Vitrines elucidate how geometric marquetry and shaded pientre en bois were made; the back of a mechanical desk is removed to expose the lead counterweights, cords and pulleys that enable massive rolltops to slide effortlessly up and down; one tall-case clock is fitted with glass sides to reveal the cylinder music-box, gears, rods and bellows operating the mechanical dulcimer and flute that would play duets on the hour. A small table is displayed disassembled for shipment or travel, with screw-in cabriole legs anticipating today's kit furniture. Many Roentgen pieces included instruction manuals for assembly. And for the most complex ones featuring clocks and music boxes, the firm even offered maintenance contracts.

Physically the exhibition is a pleasure to visit. Works are displayed with enough space between them to allow viewers to concentrate on the intricacies of one piece at time. And the chronological arrangement lets us witness the Roentgens developing their artistic and technical ideas as high-style European taste evolved from the riotous curves of mid-18th-century rococo to the relative sobriety of Neoclassicism.

The exhibition catalog, edited by the show's curator, Wolfram Koeppe, is worthy of this lavish subject, splendidly illustrated and filled with fascinating essays and copious documentation.

For those who consider their computer devices the last word in technological wonderment and convenience, "Extravagant Inventions" dramatically reveals an equivalent pinnacle of utility and beauty achieved 250 years ago.
