Chairs with arms, early 17th century. Wood and tapestry.

 

 

But here we have Louis XIV and Boulle under whom wood becomes inlaid with tortoise shell and brilliant metals, so as to place itself in equality with the splendour of the palaces. Furniture continues to be official, pompous, and foreign to private life, or at any rate, encroaching upon it solely from the outside, as in the reception room and study of the magistrate or commoner. If we were to search for tokens of coming modifications, it is there that we will find them. The shelf of the bureau assumes important outlines; its front bends in convex curves, its feet are slightly bowed in the form of an S and repose on cross bars shaped like an X. There is general relaxation in the rigidity of the official furniture admitted at Versailles, which, first inspired by the precise style of Le Brun, was perpetuated by the rigid discipline of the Gobelins.

Under the Regency and during the first years of Louis XV, everything will change. Woods of every variety will introduce themselves to decorate furniture of new forms; small apartments will replace staterooms and the bedroom will become the nest of privacy surrounded by the boudoir. The study and a thousand elegant recesses so fitted for the comedy of surprise and concealment is about to play a large role in French society.

Additionally, new things come into being. The real commode with its multiplied divisions, the dresser with numerous drawers, the secretaire which can conceal so many things under its closing panel, can now serve as a writing-table. The bureau itself becomes even more important, placed near the filing cabinet which holds deeds and correspondence; it is topped with a lockable drawer behind which has a sliding shelf that can instantly be pushed back to conceal papers scattered over it from inquisitive eyes.

Form takes unimaginable licence; every object swells to assume fantastic curves, nothing is straight or regular. Angles become rounded or hollowed; unexpected curves line the surfaces. Bulging, twisted, caricatured forms alone are admitted; ormolu rolls along in fantastic borders or gathers suddenly in unforeseen clusters twisted in corners, or forms detached wreaths, and thus an eccentric whole is completed which, while always clever, is sometimes elegant, notwithstanding its singularity.

Caprice is carried to such an extent that the fundamental law of art, propriety, is totally forgotten. To create perspectives for the eye, the piece no longer has parallel sides; they describe an outward curve, attaching themselves to a background which is much broader than the front surface so that the drawers, necessarily of rectangular form, are left isolated in a vacant space which leaves useless cavities between their sides and those of the piece. Later, when cabinet makers wished to return to more sensible shapes, not to lose the picturesque advantages of these fan-like arrangements, they flanked with smaller pieces a species of quarter-circle shaped shelves which housed fashionable trinkets, objects of foreign origin, or rare Sèvres and Dresden porcelain were placed. By returning to the architectural logic of furniture, they added to its richness while satisfying the taste of the day.