Pair of Napoleon III Armchairs to Reupholster, French Work, Circa 1880

This distinguished pair of armchairs is worked in carved wood — most likely walnut or beech, in the French cabinetmaking tradition — upholstered in fabric that has reached the end of its useful life, inviting a new garniture that will restore these frames to their full splendour. The carved wooden elements display the rich eclecticism characteristic of the Napoléon III style: scrolled armrests, turned legs, moulded aprons, and carved details that draw freely on the Baroque, Rococo, and Louis XV traditions while reinterpreting them with the vigorous assurance of Second Empire craftsmanship. Please note: the chairs require reupholstery.

Dating to approximately 1880 — the years of the early Third Republic, when the Napoléon III style had by no means exhausted its influence — this pair represents the continuation of a great tradition of French upholstered seating. The Napoléon III armchair, with its generous proportions and richly carved frame, was the quintessential seat of bourgeois comfort and social aspiration in the second half of the nineteenth century. The great ébénistes and tapissiers of the faubourg Saint-Antoine produced thousands of such chairs in the decades following the Second Empire, their forms refined by tradition and their quality maintained by the rigorous standards of the French craft guilds.

These armchairs represent a rare opportunity for the decorator or collector who wishes to acquire the noble bones of a classic French chair and dress them according to their own vision. The carved wooden frames, solid and structurally sound, will accommodate a wide range of upholstery choices — from a historically-inflected velvet or brocade to a bold contemporary fabric that recontextualises the traditional form in a modern idiom. A project chair of the finest pedigree, with a very long life ahead of them.