Now I Sit Me Down (11 page)

A cheaper alternative to upholstery was caning, which was done either by a basketmaker or by the joiner himself. Caning is another example of the influence of Chinese techniques on European chairmaking. Caned chairs were light and airy, easy to move. They appealed to the growing desire for informality. Moreover, unlike upholstery, caning did not trap mites and fleas, an advantage in an age not known for cleanliness.

A typical joiner's workshop included the master and half a dozen journeymen, each with one or two apprentices. In the 1720s, the Parisian cabinetmakers and joiners' guild included almost a thousand masters; the carvers' and painters' guilds, an equal number. The cabinetmakers and joiners' guild required masters to sign their work, so the names of master chair joiners are known. Among the most celebrated were Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot, who made the armchair that Sotheby's auctioned for $653,000; Nicolas Heurtaut, the rare case of a master joiner who was also a master carver; Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené, who regularly worked for the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, which supplied the royal household with furnishings; Jean-Baptiste Tilliard, who, like many joiners, belonged to a family of chairmakers; and Georges Jacob, who produced the first chair
à
l'anglaise
, that is, made entirely of varnished mahogany.

Fauteuil à la reine
(Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot)

Eighteenth-century furniture was expensive. At a time when a journeyman joiner earned three livres a day, a good-quality armchair might cost as much as a hundred livres.
5
For that hefty sum, the fortunate buyer got a chair that was not only roomy, comfortable, and beautifully made, but also visually seductive. There is a story that one of the spinster daughters of Louis XV was asked why she had not entered a convent like her youngest sister. “It was an armchair that was my undoing,” she replied.

In English, a chair is a chair, but in French a simple side chair is a
chaise
, while an upholstered chair with padded arms is a
fauteuil
. The latter represented the acme of French furniture-making. According to Peter Thornton, curator of furniture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, “With its curvaceous and accommodating shape, and well-rounded padding on its seat, back, and arms, [the fauteuil] was one of the most satisfactory forms of seat-furniture ever devised, pleasing both to the eye and the human frame.” The
fauteuil
à
la reine
(named in honor of the queen) was a heavy armchair that was traditionally an integral part of the design of a room, its location coordinated with the paneling, and its carving and upholstery integrated with the decor. The chair stood permanently against the wall, so the back was generally left undecorated. During the reign of Louis XV, as social customs became less formal, chair placement grew more casual. The famous painting
Reading from Molière
, by Jean-François de Troy, a contemporary of Watteau, captures such a relaxed moment. Half a dozen friends are lounging comfortably in large, low armchairs in the drawing room of a Parisian
appartement
. The heavy chairs are
fauteuils
à
la reine
—you can see the flat, unfinished backs—which have been moved to the center of the room and arranged in a loose circle. Three of the chairs match the silk damask on the walls, while two of them appear to have come from another room.

As informality took hold, furniture makers produced smaller and lighter fauteuils. There were several types. The
fauteuil en cabriolet
had a rounded back. The
fauteuil
à
coiffer
had a low back to facilitate the brushing of a lady's long hair. The bergère, or shepherdess, was a tublike armchair with closed arms, low to the ground with more generous dimensions, and often with a fitted down cushion; in other words, a very comfortable armchair. The
bergère gondole
was a tub chair whose rounded back resembled the prow of a gondola, while the wide
marquise
had continuous arms and back. The
bergère
à
oreilles
—a chair with ears—was the French wing chair, and was sometimes called a
bergère en confessional
because the sitter was partially hidden, as in a confessional box.

Chaises longues have already been discussed, and seating furniture included a variety of
canapés
, or sofas, which were basically stretched fauteuils. There are examples of winged settees, and
corbeille
sofas whose backs wrapped around the sides like a basket. So-called Turkish sofas were deep enough to support the legs, and were fitted with bolsters and cushions. The
canapé à
confidents
was an unusual sofa with separate end seats that were either fixed or detachable. This allowed two people—the
confidents
—to have an intimate conversation, literally tête-à-tête, while decorously appearing to sit apart.

There was an astonishing variety of side chairs. Dining chairs generally had upholstered seats; backs were either decoratively slatted, caned, or upholstered. Toward the end of the century, round-back dining chairs (
en médaillon
) became popular. The
chauffeuse
, or warming chair, was a low lady's side chair, like a slipper chair, usually placed beside the fireplace in a bedroom. Because the study was a male preserve (Madame du Châtelet notwithstanding), desk chairs had a masculine character and were often upholstered in leather. Some had saddle-shaped seats supported by center legs, and some swiveled, the model for Jefferson's “whirlgig chair.” Card games were a popular pastime, and spectators would often turn a chair and straddle it, leaning on the top rail. Furniture makers produced the
voyeuse
(looking chair), whose padded rail made this position more comfortable. Card players could use a
ponteuse
, in which the padded rail held a box for one's bets (
pontes
). Ladies could hardly be expected to straddle, and they used a
voyeuse
à
genoux
(kneeling chair), which resembled a prie-dieu and had a seat low enough to kneel on and a taller back with a padded rail. Such chairs were also made for listening to music, and there are several examples with backs in the shape of lyres.

Louis XVI
voyeuse à genoux

What was the reason for this extravagance of choice? In part, an appetite for novelty. Fashion reigned supreme, and the nature of fashion is that it changes: what is attractive and interesting in one decade becomes uninteresting and dull in the next. A chair such as the klismos had persisted for hundreds of years, but the French eighteenth century regularly produced new types of furniture such as the bergère and the
voyeuse
. Changing tastes also played a role. After thirty years, people tired of rococo and turned to a more severe neoclassicism. After only a decade, that was succeeded by the
goût arabesque
, which combined elements of both rococo and neoclassicism.

Although French chairmakers experimented with new forms of decoration, like their English counterparts they never abandoned their hard-won knowledge of joinery and ergonomics. The eighteenth century simply extended the earlier discoveries of comfortable seating by creating greater variety. There were chairs for all occasions, grand as well as casual; chairs for sitting alone as well as in groups; for sitting up, for lounging, and for reclining; different chairs for conversation, reading, playing, and napping. The variety of postures—straddling a
voyeuse
, or sinking into a bergère—reflected a less self-conscious attitude toward the human body and an awareness of the richness that life offered. Talleyrand, who served the Revolution and Napoleon, but was born during the reign of Louis XVI, understood the charms of the ancien régime. “Those who haven't lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution do not know the sweetness of living,” he once observed.
La douceur de vivre
.

 

SIX

Sack-backs and Rockers

In the late seventeenth century, people living in the American colonies who wanted fine furniture had to import it from England. But by the early 1700s, they had their own cabinetmakers. The leading center of furniture-making was Boston, followed—and in the latter half of the eighteenth century surpassed—by Philadelphia. Smaller cities such as Newport, Rhode Island, also developed local expertise. Furniture was exported to other coastal colonies: Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. As early as 1730, decades before the appearance of Chippendale's pattern book, Boston cabinetmakers were producing side chairs with cabriole legs (called bandy legs) and ball-and-claw feet (called crowfeet) that rivaled English models for quality. New World cabinetry was facilitated by the availability of hardwoods—black walnut from Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as Jamaican mahogany, which was used long before it became popular in England. After mid-century, English pattern books enabled American cabinetmakers to keep up with the latest fashions. Chippendale's
Director
was popular, as was Robert Manwaring's
The Cabinet and Chair Maker's Real Friend and Companion
, which was published in Boston only two years after it appeared in London.

A ready supply of hardwoods is hardly sufficient to explain the accomplishments of colonial furniture makers. A new demand for high-quality furniture was part of a broad cultural change. The historian Richard L. Bushman has described the process of refinement that began in 1700 as the consequence not simply of greater prosperity and fashion consciousness, but of a genuine and widespread desire for gentility. This desire manifested itself in many different ways, not least the impulse to beautify one's surroundings, especially one's home. “Men of substance everywhere occupied themselves with the details of architecture, furniture design, and landscaping,” writes Bushman.

The leading “man of substance”—in many ways a national model—was George Washington. In 1757, he began to enlarge his house at Mount Vernon and to beautify its grounds, and over the next three decades he made it into a twenty-room mansion that was one of the larger houses in Virginia. He furnished the rooms with a variety of chairs from many sources. One of his earliest acquisitions was six used black walnut Chippendale-style side chairs, which he bought from a fellow officer while he was serving in the Virginia militia. Later, he ordered a dozen mahogany side chairs from his English agent in London; the wing chair in his and Martha's bedroom came from an English auction house. In 1790, Washington bought several fauteuils and a bergère with a footstool from the Comte de Moustier, the departing French ambassador.

The impressive main room at Mount Vernon rises the full two-story height of the house. Decorated in the Adamesque style, this salon was used for socializing, receptions, and dancing, and also functioned as a banqueting room—when a temporary table was set up on trestles. The room contained two dozen Sheraton-style mahogany side chairs as well as two grand sideboards, all made by John Aitken, a Scottish-born Philadelphia cabinetmaker. The chairs in the adjacent parlor were Chippendale-style mahogany cabriole side chairs, similar to the ones that Thomas Burling, a New York cabinetmaker, had supplied for Washington's official residence when the federal capital was in New York City. Burling made the side chairs in the family dining room.

Washington's study contained a mahogany dressing table that he had bought from de Moustier, and a handsome tambour secretary made by Aitken. At the secretary stood an upholstered barrel-back swivel chair. Washington recorded that he paid Burling seven pounds for the “Uncom
n
Ch
r.
.” Such swivel chairs were indeed uncommon in America though not, as we have seen, in France—perhaps Washington came across one in de Moustier's study. A month later, not to be outdone, Jefferson ordered his own swivel chair, the infamous “whirlgig chair,” with a taller back and bright red leather upholstery (Washington's chair was black). Jefferson also added two “candle arms,” so that when he swiveled, light would follow. Different men, different chairs.