30 
House & Garden 
FRENCH WALL FURNITURE of the 18TH CENTURY 
The Louis XV Style , the Louis XVI and Directoire Styles and The Empire Are Three 
Epochs Interesting to Students of Furniture 
H. D. EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE 
RENCH wall furniture of the 18th Cen¬ 
tury experienced the same impetus of fresh 
design and multiplication of forms as did 
English furniture in the same period. Social 
conditions underwent a marked change and 
development, and these changes were quickly 
reflected in the fashion of the furniture. When 
we speak of 18th Century furniture styles we 
must, of course, include those that appeared 
during the early years of the 19th Century 
as well. Those later phases were due to causes 
that began to operate during the final years 
of the 18th Century and it would be illogical 
and misleading to attempt to make a sharp 
division at the year 1800. In the same way, 
the beginning of the new influences may be 
placed approximately at the year 1715 when 
the death of Louis XIV brought an end to 
the political regime that had previously affected 
the trend of expression in mobiliary art. 
The Three Epochs 
We have, then, to reckon with three distinct 
epochs and three corresponding modes of 
mobiliary expression, each marked by strongly 
individual characteristics altogether peculiar to 
itself—the Louis XV style, the Louis XVI 
and Directoire styles, together forming the 
second epoch, and the' Empire style. 
The Louis XV style grew out of the vio¬ 
lent revulsion of feeling against the narrow 
restraint and grandiose magnificence of the 
preceding era. In its more extreme manifes¬ 
tations it ran the whole gamut of extrava¬ 
gance and absurdity, often, it would seem, 
from the sheer satisfaction of being able to 
indulge in unrestricted irresponsibility. 
It was pre-eminently an age of fads. It was 
Walnut side table with pillar legs. 16th 
Century. South Kensington Museum 
also the age of curves. To what extremes the 
supremacy of curved distortion and fantasti¬ 
cal conceits in quest of more novelty could 
be carried, we may gather from a contem¬ 
porary protest. The indignant writer, an able 
designer, inveighs against “children of the 
same size as a vine-leaf; or figures of a sup¬ 
posed natural size supported by a decorative 
flower that could scarcely support a little bird 
without bending; trees with trunks slimmer 
than one of their own leaves, and many other 
sensible things of the same order.” He con¬ 
tinues that “we should be infinitely obliged” 
to wood-carvers, designers and decorators “if 
they would be kind enough not to change the 
uses of things, but to remember, for instance, 
that a chandelier should be straight and per¬ 
pendicular, in order to carry the light, and 
not twisted as if it had been wrenched; and 
that a socket-rim should be concave to receive 
the running wax and not convex to shed it 
back upon the chandelier; and a multitude 
of equally unreasonable details that would 
take too long to particularise.” 
A San Louis XV 
Unfortunately this extreme and disordered 
aspect of the Louis XV style has been so 
stressed that the average person of common 
{Below) Louis XIV carved 
armchair with carved wal¬ 
nut frame, scroll legs and 
shaped saltire stretchers. 
Courtesy of the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Museum 
(Right) The pillar legged 
draw table in walnut be¬ 
longs to the end of the 
16 th Century and is the 
characteristic style of 
Henri II 
(Left) A characteristic 
Louis XIV heavily carved 
and gilt console table—has 
canted Flemish scroll legs 
and an ornate, curving 
stretcher 
Ah example of the type of 
chair produced at the end 
of the Xlth Century can 
be seen in the above Louis 
XIV design in carving and 
gilt 
