French case furniture from the latter half of the nineteenth century, called “Napoleon III” production after the nation’s emperor, was marked by its eclecticism and the revival of earlier styles. From the 1850s on, newly wealthy industrialists and middle class buyers alike swooned over the Louis revivals, which gave rebirth to styles in architecture and decoration first popular during the eighteenth century under the reigns of kings Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI. Because such revival designs were purchased by both the fabulously wealthy and ordinary middle class consumers, one key issue for today’s collector is how to differentiate between the rather ordinary mass output of the time, and the finer-quality meubles de luxe, or luxury furniture. However, if the collector follows several guidelines, he or she can feel more confident about buying nineteenth-century pieces of superior quality while avoiding more common items.

The nineteenth-century fashion for Louis revival styles was largely initiated by French Empress Eugenie who decorated her many palaces with such furniture. It was also embraced both by a cabinet-making industry short on novel ideas, and by a new class of wealthy individuals eager to identify with the splendors of the Old Regime by furnishing their imposing dwellings with copies of cabinets, tables and desks based on eighteenth-century regal models. Some collectors of French eighteenth-century art, like one of England’s wealthiest men, the Fourth Marquess of Hertford, commissioned exact copies of Old Regime royal pieces, most famously, of Louis XV’s desk or bureau du roi completed in 1769.

For his replicas, the Marquess of Hertford had exact drawings made of the unique, royal, eighteenth-century pieces he copied. This precision also characterized the work of the most astute cabinet makers, who often gained access to royal residences to make drawings of the furniture within, study construction details, take imprints of the bronze mounts, and create their own wax or terracotta models.

The best nineteenth-century workshops, like those of Durand and Grohé, strictly followed the design standards of their forefathers, and rivaled or even surpassed the quality of execution of top eighteenth-century cabinet-makers. Most furniture makers, however, catered to a clientele of moderate means, and produced pieces inspired by Old Regime designs but lacking in some of the finer details. The goal of today’s collector should be to avoid weak, ordinary examples of revival styles and to shun “pastiches;” nineteenth-century pieces that contain crude, disproportional elements roughly mimicking Louis style designs.

When looking for a top-quality nineteenth-century piece of French furniture, the collector should assess several aspects of each chest of drawers, table, or desk: the form and dimension, the bronze mounts, the marquetry, and the signature. Nineteenth-century meubles de luxe normally followed typical Old Regime forms, however Napoleon III era production included chests of drawers with carcasses of exaggerated serpentine and bombé shape. Nineteenth-century furniture was usually made for smaller apartments, not the grand aristocratic chateaux of the pre-Revolutionary era, and so was of a reduced size. The collector should stick to dimensions typical of the eighteenth-century originals and avoid pieces greatly reduced in width. The best replicas will display dimensions quite close, if not perfectly identical, to the Old Regime original (see illustration #1).

Louis Style Chest

Illustration #1: Louis XVI style chest of drawers c.1880.

Copy of original by J.H. Riesener at Versailles.

Image courtesy Christies Images, Ltd. 2006 (www.christiesimages.com)

When judging overall form, the collector should note the proportion between the top section of a piece and the legs supporting it: the top should not sit too heavily on legs that appear to lack strength, or, to the contrary, the legs should not appear too heavily hipped in relationship to a more dainty top. Finally, a chest of drawers must have a marble top at least 2.5 cm thick with a molded edge that follows the line of the carcass. The marble should neither be too wide nor too deep for the proportions of the carcass. Veined and colored marble is always a plus, and any plain wood top signals poor production.

The presence of bronze mounts, especially bronze outlining, adds significantly to the desirability of a piece. Favor chests of drawers whose contours are outlined by bronze mounts starting as chutes or caryatides at the corners; morphing into bronze stringings encompassing the apron and down to the legs; ending with shoe-like sabots. In the same vein, better desks often have drawers framed by bronze mounts which both enhance and protect the wood veneer.

The quality of bronze mounts is paramount when evaluating nineteenth-century French furniture. Nineteenth-century bronze workers were just as capable as their predecessors and sometimes used models from the Old Regime to recast bronzes exhibiting classical motifs like, for example, generous female busts, satyr masks, paw feet, thick acanthus leaves and vitruvian scrolls. However, they also created original designs for the most successful workshops, such as Schmit, Beurdeley, Dasson and Linke. The best bronzes exhibit deep and precise chasing or cut work that is never mechanical. They display nuance in their treatment of burnished areas, emphasizing the contours of realistic faces contrasted against punched areas with matte textures. After 1850, the use of less costly galvanized gilding was ubiquitous, but a few workshops still continued the traditional and dangerous technique of mercurial gilding. Connoisseurs value the latter, preferring its warmth and brighter yellow color to the dull and plastic qualities of galvanized gilding.

The most alluring Napoleon III pieces feature bronzes designed and cast specifically for them. For example, on the front of a high quality Louis XV style chest of drawers, the floral marquetry inlay pairs gracefully with the bronze mounts, so that both have enough space. The overall effect is of a symbiotic relationship, whereby the sparkle of the gilt bronze nicely offsets the tulipwood veneer and end-cut kingwood marquetry. On average-quality furniture bronze mounts will often overlap the decorative inlay.

Bronze mounts must embellish and emphasize the lines of a piece, not try to compensate for plain or ordinary casework, nor should they appear heavy or garish. In addition, look for uniformity in scale between decorative motifs in the mounts throughout the piece. The general outlook must be one of harmony in proportions. For example, a desk seems out of kilter if its frieze drawer exhibits elaborate and lively foliate mounts while the espagnolettes heading each leg are comparatively restrained and undersized.

The rules of proportion, quality, and design which apply to bronze mounts are also true of marquetry and parquetry, or geometric inlay, which should never look tight or dense. The foliate marquetry design on first-rate eighteenth-century Louis XV chests of drawers is consistently airy and loose, while unremarkable nineteenth-century examples seem affected and stiff. Good marquetry and parquetry use contrasting grain and colors, but some nineteenth-century pieces include gaudy contrasts, like that of kingwood veneer with ebony crossbanding. Typical of Napoleon III production is Boulle-style furniture featuring a marquetry technique begun in the late seventeenth century by André-Charles Boulle, and usually based on baroque designs by Jean Bérain. Such marquetry consists of inlaid tortoiseshell and materials like brass and pewter, traditionally on an ebony ground. Most Boulle-style nineteenth-century cabinets or wardrobes are on an ebonized ground, with those of a subtle, darker color pigment applied behind the shell preferable to those with an intense red made of resin (see illustration #3). Many examples, however, suffer from a loaded composition and mechanical-looking brass inlay.

Louis Style Wardrobe

Illustration #3: Louis XIV style wardrobe by C.G. Winckelsen in 1867. Copy of original by A.C. Boulle in the Louvre museum.

Image courtesy Christies Images, Ltd. 2006 (www.chritiesimages.com)

The purist will walk away from a nineteenth-century Louis XV style chest of drawers, rococo in design, if it features the Greek key or garland of flowers, both typical of the neo-classical or Louis XVI period. However, some cabinet work of outstanding quality by successful makers such as Zwiener and François Linke, included more fanciful design and a highly stylized repertoire of classical motifs not seen in the eighteenth century. Because these flamboyant creations were a class of their own, especially in regards to their high quality bronzes, Zwiener and Linke were both acclaimed by their contemporaries and are still highly regarded today even though their pieces did not always follow the traditional rules for the Louis styles(see illustration 4).

Louis Style Ladies Desk

Illustration #4: Louis XV style lady’s desk by F. Linke c.1900. Image courtesy Christies Images, Ltd. 2006 (www.christiesimages.com)

Signatures are featured on most nineteenth-century French furniture by prominent makers even though some excellent quality pieces lack such marks. Signatures can be found stamped on carcasses, engraved on locks or bronze mounts, or more rarely incorporated into the marquetry. Ultimately, the presence or lack of a signature should not outweigh the intrinsic qualities of a piece in a collector’s judgment.

Finally, the collector of nineteenth-century French revival style furniture should be on the lookout for pieces by cabinet-makers who attended the frequent International Exhibitions at which craftsmen presented the best examples of their production to a jury. The rare case where there is an undisputed provenance tracing a piece of furniture to an Exhibition in Paris or London, especially if the maker was awarded a medal for that piece, provides the connoisseur of nineteenth-century French furniture with the opportunity to acquire a piece not only of guaranteed quality, but of historical importance and acclaim as well.

Readers interested in nineteenth-century furniture may contact Olivier Soustelle at soustelle@mac.com or by calling (253) 759-4754.