50 
House & Garden 
TABLES AND CHAIRS OF 18 th CENTURY FRANCE 
The Rege?ice, Direcloire and Empire Styles Are Fascinating Periods for 
the Student of Furniture 
H. D. EBERLEIN & ABBOT McCLURE 
A Direcioire arm¬ 
chair with curving 
lines and roll back. 
The carved panel of 
military design of 
this chair is typical 
of the style of this 
period 
—considered the style Louis Quinze par 
excellence—one must needs exercise not 
a little circumspection. 
It is cjuite true that Rococo, in some 
of its extreme aspects, is guilty of inde¬ 
fensible whimsicality. It is c|uite true, 
tco, that at times it degenerates into the 
most saccharine inanity. But all these 
shortcomings pertain to the exaggerated 
forms. 
Free of wanton and fantastic excesses, 
a very great quantity indeed of Rococo 
furniture exhibits truly sterling sobriety 
and balance coupled with facile grace. 
This is eminently true of a large propor¬ 
tion of the tables and seating accessories, 
items that above all others 
were especially wont to re¬ 
flect any vagaries that 
might be abroad. 
The truth is that we 
owe no small debt to the 
gay revolutionary experi¬ 
mentalists of the Rococo 
age and their ready genius 
at contriving agreeable re¬ 
sults out of elements often¬ 
times seemingly most un¬ 
promising, and it is ex¬ 
ceedingly unfortunate that 
, we have allowed the taw- 
I dry begilt monstrosities, 
I mistakenly exploited in 
r the 19th Century as repre¬ 
sentative of the Rococo 
style, to blind us to much 
real merit and lead us to 
regard the name “Rococo” 
as opprobrious. 
The Louis Seize Style 
By a natural swing of 
the pendulum of popular 
taste in the opposite direction, the Louis Seize 
Style witnessed a return to Classic ideals of in¬ 
spiration. But it was a mild Classicism, tem¬ 
pered by a playful and very human realism 
which showed itself in the free employment of 
naturalistic and especially rustic motifs grafted 
onto a base or background composed of Classic 
{Continued on page 86) 
T HFI 18th Century was a period pe¬ 
culiarly prolific in furniture styles. 
If it was the hey-day of the chair and 
cabinet-maker in England—a fact ac¬ 
knowledged by common consent—it was 
not a whit the less so in France. The 
trend toward intricate specialization is 
plainly to be seen in the many forms of 
both tables and seating furniture. And 
when we speak of the 18th Century we 
naturally include the first two decades 
of the 19th, for the styles in vogue in 
those years were the logical result of a 
train of influences that had their begin¬ 
ning, and indeed a portion of their frui¬ 
tion, before the 18th Centur}' came to a 
close. 
Style follow’ed style in a 
brilliant sequence. The 
opening years of the 18th 
Century disclosed the 
grandiose forms of the 
Style Louis XIV (Qua- 
torze), still conspicuous in 
the forefront of the field. 
The Regence 
Next after this impres¬ 
sive mode came the mani¬ 
festations of the Regence, 
which showed a revulsion 
of feeling against the stilt¬ 
ed formality and decorous 
magnificence of the fore¬ 
going regime. There was 
an unbending of hitherto 
rigid rules, there was more 
fluidity of line, there was 
vastly more consideration 
for bodily comfort, there 
was a general paring dowm 
of scale, ancl while the 
whole mass of Louis Qua- 
torze traditions and forms was not altogether 
discarded in a trice, there was infinitely more 
flexibility in their emplo}’ment. The Regence 
Style, in other words, was the transition stage 
between the stately pomp of Louis Quatorze 
design and the irresponsible mirthfulness of 
Louis Quinze Rococo. 
In forming a judgment of the Rococo Style 
Louis XVIth ber- 
gere, eminently cal¬ 
culated for thor¬ 
ough comfort. Note 
that restrained 
curves were still re¬ 
tained to some ex¬ 
tent 
Late Louis XVIth table with 
caryatid legs and classical 
decorations on apron 
Louis XVIth oblong table 
with lyre-shaped ends, a fa¬ 
vorite decorative device 
carvea ana gui i-uim v n 
insole table with classic mo¬ 
tifs of decoration 
Louis XVth 
carved and gilt 
console bracket 
characteristic of 
■the period 
