A French Mahogany Metamorphic Reading Chair (18th Century AD), from England.

Chair has a flat semi-circular top with an urn-shaped splat. An adjustable/detachable wooden candle arm with wooden drip bobeshe swings from left arm of piece. Other arm has a book stand that is also adjustable/detachable. There are many different styles of 18th Century AD, furniture. Era represents Golden Age of Furniture Making. While furniture makers were trained in construction of highly finished, sophisticated designs, styles during this time are widely divergent.

The 18th Century AD, furniture makers replaced walnut with mahogany as their wood of choice due to its durability. Influenced by art and architecture of Italy. Common pieces included chairs with shell-shaped backs, furniture with fish-scale scrolls, and side tables with marble tops. Furniture were constructed from mahogany, while less expensive pieces were made from cherry, maple or walnut. Chairs typically had cabriole-style front legs ending in a ball and claw foot and straight back legs and featured straight backs with a yoke-shaped top and a center splat with detailed cut out designs. Chairs, settees, and stools were upholstered in fine fabrics. New Rococo chairs were upholstered à chassis, on removable frames secured by clips, so that changes from winter to summer furniture could be effected without recourse to menuisier. Off-season upholstered frames were stored in garde-meuble. These early Louis XV chairs have backs upholstered, with back in a flat panel that was ordinarily placed squared to wall, so that top-rails' curves complemented those of boiserie  panels behind them.

French fashions in chairs, as with everything else, radiated from Paris. From late 1720s, fashionable "Louis XV" French chairs were constructed without stretchers, which interfered with unified flow of curved seatrails into cabriole legs that generally ended in scroll feet. According to strict guild  regulations in force until Revolution, French chairmaking was business of menuisier alone, whose craft was conjoined with that of upholsterer, both of whom specialized in seat-furniture making in Paris. A range of specialised seats were developed and given fanciful names, of which comfortable shepherdess is most familiar. Walnut and beech were characteristics woods employed; finishes were painted in clear light tones en suite with wall panelling, gilded or left in natural color, in which case walnut was timber used. Fruitwoods were popular for chairmaking in provinces, where menuisier might also be called upon to provide carved and moulded boiseries for rooms.

In late 1760s, first Parisian  neoclassical chairs were made, even before accession of Louis XVI, whose name is attached to first phases of style. Straight tapering fluted legs joined by a block at seat rail and architectural mouldings, characterize style, in which each element is a discrete entity. The 18th Century was indeed golden age of Chair, especially in France and England (Colonial America), between which there was considerable give and take of ideas. Even Diderot could not refrain from writing of them in his Encyclopédie. Typical Louis Seize style chair, oval-backed and ample of seat, with descending arms and round-reeded legs, covered in Beauvais or some such gay tapestry woven with  Boucher  or Watteau-like scenes, a very gracious object, in which period reached its high-water mark. Empire brought in squat and squabby shapes, comfortable enough no doubt, but entirely destitute of inspiration. English chairs were often heavier and more sombre than those of French design. Some stories attribute its invention to Benjamin Franklin, historians trace rocking chair's origins to North America during early 18th Century. It arrived in England shortly after its development, although work continued in America.

(H: 109.22cm; W: 66.04cm, D: 67.31cm, Seat Height: 81.28cm)

Furniture Museum Vienna

#archaeohistories