Armchair
Georges Jacob
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The original purpose of this graceful armchair is not entirely clear. The boldly incurving supports with padded armrests could indicate that this chair was intended for use as a fauteuil de bureau or desk chair making it possible to pull the chair close to the writing surface. Many desk chairs of this period, however, had seats which could be rotated but the seat of this particular armchair is fixed. The back of the chair is slightly lower than customary possibly to facilitate its use at the dressing table as a fauteuil de toilette for hair dressing or wig powdering purposes. Just like desk chairs, dressing table chairs were often caned or covered in leather for practical reasons and they were sometimes fitted with a mechanism that allowed the seat to swivel. Whatever the case might be, it is clear who was responsible for cutting and joining the frame of this chair which once may have had a caned back as well as a caned seat (now hidden beneath a pillow): Georges Jacob, one of the most important menuisiers or chair-makers during the second half of the eighteenth-century France, whose name is stamped underneath the front seat rail. The carved decorative motifs of over-lapping coins, spiraling ribbon, scrolls, and spiral-twisted legs are all indicative of the neo-classic style of the 1780s.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.