Neoclassical-Style Silvered-Steel Curule Stool with Swan Heads by Maison Jansen

The curule seat — sella curulis in its Roman original — was one of the most politically charged furnishings of antiquity: reserved for magistrates of curule rank, its crossed supports and absence of a back conferred authority on whoever occupied it without the visual weight of a throne. When architects Percier and Fontaine codified the Empire style at the turn of the nineteenth century, they revived the curule form as the paradigmatic seat of Napoleonic power, multiplying it in ormolu-mounted mahogany and in silvered and gilded metal across the imperial palaces. Maison Jansen, which by the twentieth century had become the pre-eminent executor of the French grand interior, inherited and perpetuated this vocabulary with a refinement few houses could equal.

This curule stool, dating from around 1940, demonstrates the enduring vitality of that tradition. The crossed legs in silvered steel culminate in swan-head terminals — the swan being Napoleon's personal device, borrowed from antiquity and carried through Empire décor on chair-arms, lamp standards, and consoles throughout the first third of the nineteenth century. In Jansen's hands the motif is handled with characteristic assurance: each head is modelled with precision, the neck gracefully curved, the beak crisply defined.

The seat was originally upholstered — in silk, velvet, or leather — and may be reupholstered to the collector's taste. The silvering presents some wear consistent with age and use, particularly at the contact points of the crossed legs, which does not diminish the sculptural quality of the piece. Such honest patina, on a documented Maison Jansen work, is in keeping with the aesthetic of a well-lived-with antique.

At 53 × 42 × 51 cm, a distinguished example of Maison Jansen's continuing fidelity to the neoclassical ideal — produced during the complex years of the wartime Occupation and demonstrating that the house's standards of craftsmanship remained uncompromised.