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As unwelcome as it is, the pandemic is so penetrating that it changes life - and one's own home.
The place, to which one used to like to return after long days, is now only too happy to leave for a few days.
The kitchen table becomes an office, the living room becomes a fitness studio, private life is mixed with work, boundaries dissolved.
Thanks to Zoom & Co., people who would never have been invited to your home appear in your own kitchen and curiously look around in the background during lengthy “calls”.
It is not without a certain irony that a piece of furniture, of all things, can provide the longed-for protection from indiscreet glances and the complete merging of areas of life, which most of them come from the office, the doctor's office or - if you have already seen one from the inside Know vaccination centers, i.e. from completely non-private surroundings: the paravent.
Its comeback was already apparent among interior fans around four years ago, when more and more screens were shown at the furniture fairs in Cologne and Milan.
One of the most popular products from the Luxembourg interior label Dante is a screen with the sonorous name "Minima Moralia", which is not only practical with folded fabric between aluminum frames, but also blends in with almost any living style.
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Its look meanders somewhere between retro charm and Asian inspiration.
"When you look at it, a story emerges in your head that evokes both memories and longings," explains Christophe de la Fontaine, the designer behind the screen.
The Luxembourger likes elements of the home that are “not so obvious”.
And finally, a screen is there to make things a little less obvious.
This even applies to its classification: is it a piece of furniture or a (rather large) decorative item?
Anyone looking for screens online will find what they are looking for in the “Side furniture” category, under “Accessories” or under “Home decoration”.
Privacy and noise protection: partition walls by ZilenZio
Source: ZilenZio
That is probably also due to its broad spectrum.
Some think of the exotic looking bamboo models in the living rooms of self-appointed Feng Shui experts, others of the ensemble of sober PVC room dividers and dusty green plants known from open-plan offices.
Aesthetics fans rave about design classics such as the refined “Brick Screen” by Eileen Gray or the roll-out “Artek Paravent” by Alvar Aalto.
And those with a history of culture see gold-framed, lavishly embroidered screens with six or more panels à la Versailles in front of them.
Against drafts in palaces
In the extensive palace complex west of Paris, the “fángfēng” (“wind screen”), which was created in China in the third century BC and later became the folding screen (“byobu”) with several panels in Japan, also served very practical purposes namely, pull it quite a bit.
In contrast, chimney screens and paravents ("keeping the wind away") helped.
In Paris in the 17th century, personalities like the Marquise de Rambouillet made it a trend, who gave her literary salons an intimate atmosphere - guaranteed without drafts.
In the remake of Jane Austen's “Emma” in 2020, the hypochondriac father of the heroine, played by the wonderful Bill Nighy, was so afraid of this that he was constantly surrounded by screens of different sizes.
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Today he would have been delighted with the large selection of medical screens. The models, which can be found in practices, hospitals and vaccination centers, are easy to transport and either have PVC panels that can withstand any disinfectant, or they are covered with antibacterial fabric. The landlord, who was always concerned about his health, would only have had to accept the break in style with the opulent furnishings of his country house.
One of the biggest screen fans ever only got one kind into the house, pardon, into the apartment: In the course of her life, Coco Chanel collected 32 Chinese Coromandel screens from the late Ming era. She once said that she almost passed out with enthusiasm the first time she saw one of the large, black lacquered and artistically carved screens. When exactly this near-fainting occurred is unclear; Chanel rewrote her biography whenever she felt like it. Sometimes she had loved Coromandels since childhood, then only discovered them again in her mid-20s.
Her successor Karl Lagerfeld also whistled for an immovable résumé.
For him, clothing was like a "screen behind which one can hide".
An apt picture, as both shield what should remain private and - depending on how unusual and skillfully they are designed - they can still attract everyone's attention.
From the unadorned plastic room divider as a counterpart to the functional jacket to the pastel Scandi chic of Gustaf Westman and his “Curvy Room Divider” to the couture robe that has become furniture in the form of a “Minima Moralia”, everything is possible.
"In addition to the basics, there is also a desire for one or two extravagance that helps you to express your own personality", so the experience of Christophe de la Fontaine - despite the current restrictions.
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In the lockdown, the home has become even more of a stage on which the will to create and self-expression can be lived out (even if the audience is currently very manageable). Furnishing and decoration are no longer life decisions, but are adapted to the respective phase. This works best with pieces that are versatile. In this regard, the paravent in all its variations cuts an extremely good figure, because it can screen the workplace (if it is provided with noise insulation, even from the babble of voices) and hide untidy corners, but it can also be converted into a bed headboard instead of heavy curtains be placed in front of the window or like paneling in front of the wall.
Just as you don't want to constantly present every facet of your own personality to the environment, not every (virtual) visit has to see the messy clothes horse, the tower-high shelf full of DVD relics from youth or the oversized nude.
How convenient that all of this can disappear behind a screen - at least for a while.
He can even help against the feeling of monotony.
"The paravent creates rooms within rooms," emphasizes Christophe de la Fontaine.
Paravents in film history
Its provisional nature is what makes the screen so tempting: it draws a line, but not a definitive one, its flexible form always has a permeable note, which makes what is behind it appear hidden and at the same time close. Brigitte Bardot played in "The Truth" and Sophia Loren in "It began in Naples" as early as 1960. In 1987 Jennifer Gray danced around a white screen in “Dirty Dancing”, the guitar riff from “Love is Strange” in the background, Patrick Swayze on his knees and his heart hopelessly lost. A Schmonzette, no question about it. But the winking theatricality that is in this piece of furniture when you are not dancing in front of it fits in well with the time.
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