Rocaille is a decorative element or ornamental motif in architecture that looks like a stylized shell or pebble. It is sometimes referred to as the Rococo style.

The word “rocaille” comes from the French rocaille, which means “a fragment of stone, rubble, shell fragment”. The title “rococo” was formed from it. Ornaments in the form of shells are the most characteristic of the Rococo - a style that was popular in Europe in the first half of the 18^th century. It originated in France and was particularly pronounced in painting and decorative arts. Rococo reflected the mood of the aristocracy before the Great French Revolution: it was romantic, frolicsome, theatricalised. The authors of the Great Russian Encyclopaedia note that Rococo was characterized by "lightness, jocularity and frivolous elegance, inclination to intimacy and chamber and intimacy and privacy".

The word “rocaille” was first used by the designer and jeweler Jean Mondon in 1736. He published an album of engravings entitled “The First Book of the Rocaille and Cartel Patterns”. Cartels referred to a form that resembled a roll of paper with a torn edge. Scholars believe that rocaille may also have been used to refer to any convex pattern.

In the second half of the 18^th century, the word was often used in an ironic vein as a synonym for “apishness”. Such examples can be found in the texts of the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had a negative attitude to the stylistic tendencies of the beginning of the century.

Scholars attribute the emergence of patterns and decorations in the form of shells to pavilions with nautical motifs popular in the previous Baroque era. They were stylized as the kingdom of the ancient Roman God of water, Neptune, and the walls were decorated with mouldings in the form of shells – symbols of the deity.

The rocaille elements differed from similar elements of the Renaissance period in that they resembled a complex curl in shape and were not symmetrical. Researchers noted that an important feature of these elements was their features of atectonics – unrelated to the functional parts of the building, decorativeness. The rocaille elements were met only as decorations.

In Russia, rocaille details were actively used during the late Elizabethan Baroque, approximately in the 1750s. Architects Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Dmitry Ukhtomsky, Savva Chevakinsky decorated buildings with this element. Rastrelli also decorated the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo with rocaille elements. In the palace, seashells can be found, for example, in the gilded decoration of mirrors.

Thematic album with the photos of items from the museum Collection repository, which feature rocaille elements in their décor, is posted in our Photo Gallery.

On the cover: Mother-of-pearl necessaire. Germany, Augsburg. Mid 17^th century