Turners of the Early Modern Period: Bonnier de la Mosson

The following is a detailed description of the tools and contents of the turning room in the famous cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson dating from the second quarter of the eighteenth century in Paris. This may be one of the most complete records of a gentleman's workshop yet to surface, in both drawing and written description, and this is the first English translation.

Cabinets of curiosities (which at this time meant a room or rooms and not a piece of furniture) became popular near the end of the sixteenth century for men of learning and wealth. In the beginning, the cabinets were spaces filled with all sorts of objects of natural history arranged in no apparent order: minerals and shells, as well as art and other things made by man with great skill, ranging from paintings to ornamental turnings. By the eighteenth century, these collections started to be put in order and classified by scientific means. One of the finest and most orderly cabinets was the eight room suite of Bonnier de la Mosson in Paris.

Bonnier de la Mosson (1702-1744) was born in Montpellier in the south of France. His father Joseph Bonnier (1676-1726) was the treasurer of the purse of the States of Languedoc, possibly one of the richest men in France, and when he died his fortune went to his son. Months before his death Joseph bought the hotel du Lude (demolished 1861) in Paris near the current intersection of Rue St. Dominique and Boulevard St. Germain. Bonnier spent much of the next ten years creating his cabinet on the second floor. The cabinet was arranged in the form of a gallery containing a Cabinet d'Anatomie (anatomy), a collection of human skeletons and wax models; a Cabinet de Chimie (chemistry) with fountains, still and ovens; a Cabinet de Pharmacie ou Apoticairerie (pharmacy); a Cabinet de Drogues (materials to make drugs), which contained some eight hundred glass jars of ingredients; a Cabinet d'Histoire Naturelle (natural history) with samples of all sorts of animals, insects, fish, shells, and minerals; a Cabinet de Mechanique et de Physique (physics) filled with models of all types of machines and optics; La Bibliotheque (library); and a Cabinet du Tours (lathe), the room covered here.

Bonnier was a member of the Société des Arts and he would have known many men of science that may have made use of his collections, including, possibly, the young Abbe Jean-Antoine Nollet and Bonnier's brother-in-law the Duke de Chaulnes, who invented a graduating engine that likely inspired J. R. Brown in the United States. Bonnier died in an accident at the age forty-two.

The extant documentation of these rooms consists of a set of eight large drawings, some almost six feet long in the Bibliotheque Nationale that Bonnier commissioned from the architect Jean-Baptiste Courtonne (1711-1781) in 1739-40. These drawings show amazing detail; the author noted many items are even drawn in the shadows. Bonnier also commissioned four dessusde-porte or oil paintings that fit into mouldings above the doors, from Jacques de Lajoue (1686-1761), one of the most famous rococo painters of his day. Of the four, only the Cabinet de Physique and La Bibliothèque survive in The Alfred Beit Foundation in Ireland. It is known that Lajoue did not use the workshop or lathe room as the subject for the two lost paintings. There is also a description of the collections in the book La Lithologie et la Conchyliologie (1742) by d'Argenville but little on the lathe room. Bonnier died on July 26,1744 and by December 24, Edme-Francois Gersaint had prepared a 234-page auction catalogue containing 966 lots. The auction was held on location on March 8, 1745, and the following days. It is this catalog along with the Courtonne drawing that gives us a detailed look at the lathe room. It is known that Alexis Magny (1712-c. 1777) helped with the descriptions of the tools in the workshop. Magny worked for Bonnier at the hotel du Lude as a mecanician for ten years and later went on to become famous for his microscopes.

On my photocopy of the Gersaint catalog, there are handwritten numbers in the margins on the right side of the pages; the margins are cut shorter on the left side. It is possible that these are prices realized marked some 260 years ago by someone attending the auction. The prices would be in livres, the French currency of the day. The proportion of the amounts with the items seems consistent with them being prices. There are often two numbers for a given lot, and my guess is that, just as happens today, the auctioneer may have sold an item separately from a larger lot by request. These numbers appear in brackets at the end of the lot or where they appeared in the catalog. It is very hard to equate eighteenth century prices with those of today; however, it can be noted that a professional worker or office-holder made 1000-3000 livres per year, which could translate to $50,000-$ 150,000 US. The rose engine in the cabinet sold for 1570 livres or about the same percentage of annual income a new, well-equipped Hardinge lathe would cost a college professor today.

A number of the buyers and current locations of objects from the auction are known. Buffon bought the panelling and many specimens from the Cabinet d'Histoire Naturelle that are now in the Musée National d'Historie Naturelle. There are other objects in the Louvre, Observatorie, and Musée des Beaux-Arts,. Rouen. The rose engine lathe was bought by the King of Sweden for his palace at Drottnigholm. An identifiable example of lot 134, the set of nesting chalices, is said to be in a private collection according to an article by C. R. Hill in the Annals of Science (no. 43, 1986), which is one of the most in-depth descriptions of Bonnier's cabinet.

This material poses many unanswerable questions and observations. Was this shop used much? Very little seems to have been added or removed in the five years between the Courtonne drawing and the Gersaint listing, with the exception of the added lots for painting (125-127). Even the two empty glass cases for a display of turning (141) are still empty. From the descriptions of the woods in the tools, racks, and benches one can almost "see" the room in color.

Were the walls yellow, or blue, or white trimmed in gold? If only Lajoue had painted this room or somehow described it, we would have such a stronger visual image of it. It is unlikely that Bonnier had the only workshop like this, so where arc the others and what became of them?

View the Mosson auction catalog