| |
|
In the Netherlands Marot was employed by the Stadthouder who later became William of Orange; in particular, he is associated with designing interiors in the palace of Het Loo. Though his name cannot be attached to any English building (and he doesn't have an entry in Howard Colvin's exhaustive Dictionary of British Architects) we know from his own engraving that he designed the great hall of audience for the States-General at the Hague. He also decorated many Dutch country-houses.
In 1694, he traveled with William to London where he was appointed one of his architects and Master of Works. In England his activities appear to have been concentrated at Hampton Court Palace, where he designed the garden parterres. Much of the furniture, especially the mirrors, gueridons and beds at Hampton Court bears unmistakable traces of his authorship; the tall and monumental embroidered state beds, with their plumes of ostrich feathers, their elaborate valances and cantonnieres agree very closely with his later published designs.
In his engraved designs, Marot's range was extraordinarily wide. he designed practically every detail in the internal ornamentation of the house: carved chimneypieces, ceilings, panels for walls, girandoles and wall brackets, and side tables with their pairs of tall stands. He designed gold and silver plate. The craze for collecting china which was at its height in his time is illustrated in his lavish designs for receptacles for porcelain: in one of his plates there are more than 300 pieces of china on the chimney-piece alone.
He returned to Holland, in 1698, where he lived until his death. We owe much of our knowledge of his work to the folio volume of his Baroque furniture designs published at Amsterdam in 1712. Not surprisingly the designs show strong French, Dutch and English influences.