Manet, Duet Nesting Tables honor family, simple life
The Duet Nesting Tables, produced to bring out the message behind Manet’s painting, “The Monet Family in the Garden at Argenteuil,” is all about family.
When asked to create a series of furniture pieces to bring out each quality in a renowned painting for The Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, Ernie Hershberger and his team took on a monumental task. In accepting the challenge of tying together the beauty of the artists’ vision and the grace of each piece of furniture, Hershberger and his team insisted each piece be steeped in the Anabaptist faith. Over the next weeks, we will take an in-depth look inside each piece of art and furniture that together make up the seven-piece set series, “The Met Collection,” by Abner Henry to see exactly how they drew inspiration from art and held true to faith in their work.
Manet: “The Monet Family in the Garden at Argenteuil”
— Duet Nesting Tables
French Impressionist painter Edouard Manet is famed for his work depicting scenes of modern life, and this work exemplifies Manet’s scenes of modernity with a sense of familiarity and intimacy — as Manet spent a significant amount of time with fellow French artist Oscar-Claude Monet family in France during summer 1874.
This work was painted in an outdoor setting and would have been painted live, rather than sketching live and painting later in studio, which was previously the common practice.
At the same time Manet created this work, Monet painted Manet at his easel while Renoir created his own painting composition of the same subject (Madame Monet and Monet’s son), so it exemplifies a moment of creativity and camaraderie among artists of this moment.
As for its connection to “The Met Collection,” the painting features a soft, sweeping flow that draws both mother and son together as if they are one entity. Capturing that elegant and simple flowing style was at the heart of Abner Henry’s Duet Nesting Tables, which feature a smaller table nestled underneath a larger one, with 24-karat gold enhancing the “mother/father” table and platinum interspersed across the top of the “child” table.
Hershberger said the painting is a great representation of family and portrays a certain innocence and simplicity in life. He said while the Duet Nesting Tables may look simple in their nature, they were anything but, creating plenty of challenges.
He said capturing the father’s need to protect and provide and a mother’s deep desire to love a child and provide structure was paramount for the piece.
“We started playing with 24-karat gold and platinum, and we wasted thousands of dollars of pure 24-karat gold before figuring out how to infuse those elements into the grain of the wood and still have the grain showing,” Hershberger said. “It was all trial and error because we had not blueprint of anything like it from before.”
In addition to the ingrain metals in the tabletops, the legs are overlayed with 24-karat gold, which adds to the importance of the piece depicting the child because it makes it more precious than ever.
Hershberger said the tables represent one topic in particular, that being children are the one thing in life that are not earthly and thus hold the greatest value.
Hershberger said one day in the creative process, one of his engineers came to him and told him while they had figured out how to make the ingrain process work, it wasn’t possible because from one side the ingrain was dark and from the other side it appeared light.
Hershberger said that was perfect.
“It was ideal from a spiritual standpoint, because when we stand in the light of Christ, we shine and glisten, but if we stand on the other side, it represents the darkness,” Hershberger said.
In creating the Duet Nesting Tables, the Homestead team brought an enriching appeal to two separate tables that are one in unity, signifying the family concept, with the precious metals embodying the single most important thing in life, the children, who are made to feel safe in the loving confines of their parents.
Hershberger said in sharing the story of inspiration behind this piece, he has brought more than a few people to tears in expressing the family dynamics of the value and importance of living in the light.