Postcards from Paris: Seeing the furniture in Notre-Dame

PARIS — One of the personal costs of covering the High Point Market all those many years was missing church. This is still probably true for many marketgoers today. So, with this column, I’m bringing church to you. Whether you are a person of faith or not, I hope this guided tour of the furnishings of Notre-Dame inspires you as these objects did me.

My family used our spring break about five weeks ago to revisit Paris, my favorite city in the world. We each had our personal Paris bucket list. Mine was a model of brevity: 1. Get a croissant and coffee each morning, and 2. Take Mass at the restored, rebirthed Notre-Dame and see the cathedral’s new furniture and “liturgical objects.” 

Almost exactly six years ago, on April 15, 2019, fire chewed through much of the Notre-Dame during what was a dark, dark day for the City of Lights. While work continues on its towers and midsection, the interior spaces, including the apse and many chapels, have been restored to their luminous, pre-fire luster. After our first croissants and coffees of the week, at a café in Place de la Contrescarpe, we jumped on the Metro, hopped off at Châtelet and filed inside the great Gothic cathedral for midday Mass. 

While respectful of and very much a participant in the primary activity of the hour, which was worship, I used at least part of my brain to appreciate the sinuous minimalism of the Guillaume Bardet-designed furniture pieces now starring in such a breathtaking sacred space. They did not disappoint. And while bracingly modernist, Bardet’s designs did nothing to disrupt or distract from the tradition-rich cathedral’s ancient interiors. They very much belong. 

Galerie Kreo

The small collection comprises chairs (the bishop’s “cathedra” and side chairs), altar, lectern (or “ambo”), baptistry and tabernacle (in which the consecrated hosts are kept). The pieces “embrace organic shapes that evoke a profound sense of permanence and spiritual devotion,” Bardet is quoted as saying in notes from his design firm, Galerie Kreo. 

I was most struck by the altar, which, like the vaulted ceilings of Notre-Dame, seems to float heavenward, barely tethered to terra firma by the vanishing point that is its base. The altar, lectern and cathedra chairs sing together like a choir, perfectly harmonious with their purpose. They even seem to be making a theological point in connoting with such consonance thoughts of heaven, infinity, spirit and the cosmos. 

Embodying clarity and inspiring reverence, the liturgical furnishings surprise in how understated they are, given the grandness of the setting. But, it’s a whispered surprise, because their scale is very human, no larger than their purposes demand.

The dark bronze and relatively small sizes of the furniture beautifully contrast with and punctuate the cathedral’s vast, mostly stone interiors, spaces the furniture pieces inhabit like acolytes. When Notre-Dame burned in 2019, watching coverage on CNN I held my breath and silently wept. Last month, upon seeing her again, rebirthed as President Emmanuel Macron promised she would be, again I held my breath and silently wept. 

Bardet designed the T-shaped lectern first, according to the studio’s notes, and the piece signals the flow, circularity and what you might call modesty that characterize the collection. These are religious values, as well, which is of course no coincidence. The baptistery, too, features “ritual circularity,” according to the notes.   

“The pieces should embody the essence of the past, embrace the present and welcome the future,” Bardet says in the notes. “They should resonate with conviction for Catholics and captivate the attention of non-Christians.”

Immutable, ethereal

Bardet said that for these liturgical objects he wanted natural forms that could be interpreted as comments on “the immutable.” In my view, he succeeded because of the furniture’s ethereality, quiet reverence and sanctity. And while they are minimalist, because of their very modern shapes and dark finishes, they also are quite sophisticated. If anything, in their elegance, they made up for the footwear of the officiants, which for most turned out to be sneakers, or “trainers” as Europeans call them. 

The intent of the cathedral’s new interiors, according to the press release, was to “accompany all visitors, believers or not, on a path able to initiate each person to the very meaning of that cathedral — that of the celebration of the Christian mystery.” The majestic interiors do just that, but they also compete with tides of tourists washing up its shores and like a strong current sweeping around the apse and transept. It was hard to concentrate, especially because my French is not that good. 

In the literature from the Archdiocese that accompanied the introduction of several of the designs, the aim of the liturgical objects was one of “noble simplicity” in pieces that should be “respectful of the place, its history, its strong symbolism.” 

“The ensemble that [Bardet] has built seems to me to have qualities that combine well with each other and make it a coherent project, even if modifications will be made to give it even more unity,” said Laurent Ulrich, archbishop of Paris, in the introductory “dossier” that heralded the new objects. “The chosen material, bronze, enters into a frank dialogue with the stone building. It is the first shock.”

Apparently, placing the baptistery at the entrance of the cathedral in the nave where traditionally I’ve seen it in most European churches is a big deal. Because of the baptistery’s new location, in Ulrich’s words, “as soon as you enter the cathedral you open the door to the mystery of Christ.”

Bardet’s altar, a gravity-defying block that floats as it tapers to a vanishing point on the ground, is like “a stone taken from the earth for the sacrifice,” Ulrich said, presenting itself “as a fraternal table for the Lord’s Supper.”

I was also eager to see and sit in the oak chairs set out for parishioners, chairs designed by Ionna Vautrin and manufactured by France’s Bosc. The light oak finish seemed to fit in, but otherwise, the chairs are unremarkable. The Artistic Committee that oversaw the designs said it wanted Vautrin’s chairs to be “silent” in order to give primacy to Bardet’s liturgical furniture, in particular the altar that “manifests” the presence of Christ in the nave’s center. Goal accomplished. 

The furniture, like the sacred space it inhabits, has a soul, something transcendent that speaks of what is good and true and beautiful. These objects and their hallowed house reminded me that even when the future looks dark and foreboding, there is hope. And isn’t it affirming to see furnishings enjoy such a central, even sacred role? Can I get an “Amen”?