Return of an Old Style:
Furniture to Fool the Eye

Oct. 16, 2003 -- When Martin Cohn went shopping for a table recently, he didn't know if he wanted modern or antique. He just "didn't want to spend the money for a substantial piece of furniture," he says. And he didn't get one: Instead, he bought a "tableaux cloth" -- a piece of linen silk-screened with a Louis XIV console that drapes over particle board. The cost: $1,200.

More than $1,000 for what's essentially a tablecloth? Call it extreme trompe l'oeil, and just the latest take on the baroque tradition of painting cards, books and the occasional hankie onto tables and cabinets in order to make them look that much more ornate. Interior designers and home retailers say the technique is once again gaining popularity; at some spots, sales of trompe l'oeil pieces are up as much as 20% this year. Among the hot designs: those "tableaux cloths" (by designer Mark Cutler) and pieces by Paul Wright, an English artist who specializes in painting everything from hanging keys to palazzos onto cabinets.

Hedy Konings picked up her Wright piece in northern Italy: a 12-drawer chest painted to look like the late designer Gianni Versace's villa on Lake Como, complete with water lapping at the stone foundation and dozens of lace-curtained black-shuttered windows. "It's like having a piece of Italy in my house," says Ms. Konings, a California flight attendant, who spent $1,000 on the piece.

Trompe l'oeil as a tradition actually dates back centuries, of course, but its last big incarnation was in the late '80s, when buyers tended to order customized pieces with "postcards" and "photographs" of the family painted onto the surfaces of tables and bureaus. Then, "trompe l'oeil cooled off with the economy," says Beth Dickstein, president of BDE, a New York City design-marketing firm.

But with the stock market picking up lately, perhaps people are ready for a bit of whimsy in their home décor. Lucas Schelkens has sold more than 10 of the table tablecloths at his West Coast design store in the past few months. And Linda Chodorow recently spent $11,000 each on a pair of white lacquered-wood storage cabinets silk-screened to look like a baroque breakfront. (They're by British designer Sir Paul Smith, better known for his quirky men's fashions.) "This is hiding in plain sight," says Ms. Chodorow, a New York restaurateur, who put them in her Hamptons summer home. "How much more postmodern can you get?"

Still, there are limits, says Patricia Demento, co-owner of an upstate New York design store. "People can get a real table for the same price," she notes. "This is about fantasy."

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