Louis XVI furniture
The finest craftsmen of the time, including Jean-Henri Riesener, Georges Jacob, Martin Carlin, and Jean-François Leleu, were engaged to design and make her furniture.
Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, had dispatched a group of scholars to Italy to report on the findings.
The group included the designer Jean-Charles Delafosse and the Flemish architect, sculptor and engraver Jean-François de Nefforge.
Their engravings of Greek and Roman art inspired many furniture designers and particularly the ébénistes, who made the fine marquetry inlaid ornament that decorated chests and tables.
The furniture for the room was made by Jean Henri Riesener and included a commode, a corner table and a secretary inlaid with cedar wood, amarante, and medallions of gilded bronze.
The most prominent figures under Louis XVI were Jean Henri Riesener, who received the title of ébéniste ordinaire of the royal household in 1774.
Other ébénistes, including Martin Carlin and Adam Weisweiler, worked primarily for furniture merchants who supplied the wealthy Parisian upper class.
Their furniture confiscated and was sold by the successive governments in enormous lots, with the proceeds helping the finance the long wars of the period.
The fine furniture of the period was made by craftsmen who belonged to guilds or corporations which strictly regulated the work of their members, as well as the access to the profession.
The reform-minded prime minister of Louis XVI, Turgot, attempted to suppress the power of the corporations in 1776, but, meeting fierce resistance from the artisans, he withdrew his reforms, and then, a few months later, was forced to resign himself.
[7] The decorative woods for marquetry were termed Bois des Indes and usually came from South America or the West Indies.
The most notable craftsmen of chairs were Georges Jacob, furnisher to the Royal Garde-Meuble, or furniture depot, from 1774, and Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené who obtained the title of official fourniseur in 1785.
The basic types of chairs were little changed from the Louis XV style, but a wider variety of forms appeared, particularly in the dossier, or back, of the armchairs.
The most classical elements of the chairs were the legs; they were usually carved like Roman or Greek columns tapering to the end, a style called effilés.
The decoration of upholstery, following the taste of Marie-Antoinette, and to match the decoration on the walls, was usually floral, [8] The chaise voyeuse, a type invented under Louis XV, remained popular, It featured an armrest on the top, was designed so the person sitting could sit astride with his arms on the top of the chair back, for playing cards.
A set of four of these chairs was made by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené for Madame Elizabeth, sister of Marie-Antoinette, and was delivered in 1789, the year of the beginning of the French Revolution.
In 1790 Henri Jacob produced a series of drawings of fanciful "Etruscan" furniture, inspired by a British movement and anticipating the wave of neoclassicism of the French Directory.
They included small varieties, such as the Console-Desserte, half-moon shaped, with a white marble and a simple wooden platform below supporting the legs, it was made of oak and mahogany, with slender tapering straight legs, with small drawers, discreet gilded bronze ornament, and a delicate ring of gilded bronze around the top.
The German-born ebeniste David Roentgen made a small oval table with drawers that folded out in around 1780, It was crafted of oak, rosewood, sycamore, boxwood and ebony, ornamented with guilder bronze and extremely fine marquetry in delicate floral patterns made of different colored woods.
Another popular form late in the period was a chest decorated with plaques of Sevres porcelain, usually with floral patterns.
[15] The marquetry decoration of commodes usually featured trophies or designs representing of love or music, flowers, and sometimes, in the passion for exotic themes, Chinese or Japanese objects.
The ébéniste Jean-François Leleu went even further and designed a commode with no legs, which was simply placed on a wooden base, the version that became common in the 19th century.
[16] Some other specialized cabinets appeared under Louis XVI, thanks to the improved technology for making larger panes of glass.
The updated versions by Jean-Henri Riesener, were made of oak covered with mahogany, and had simple but elegant gilded bronze drawer handles, keyholes, and a lacy decorative trim fence around the top.
The beds of the nobility and wealthy were usually square or rectangular, with four high posts supporting a canopy called the ciel, or sky.
