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FRANCE: RESTAURATION
THE RESTAURATION STYLE, as its name
suggests, refers to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy from the expulsion and final exile of Napoleon in 1815, until its fall in 1830.
Louis XVIII became King of France in 1815 and was followed by Charles X in 1824, who finally abdicated in 1830 in favour of the exiled Due d’Orleans, Louis Philippe. It was a period of considerable political unrest, culminating in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, which forced Louis Philippe to flee to England.
The market for furniture also changed, with growing interest from the middle classes and the increasing
industrialization of furniture-making due to improved tools and the use of steam. Fortuitously, this coincided with the need to furnish apartments, which, for the first time, the middle classes could rent.
CHANGING STYLES
Empire decoration remained the leading style of furniture and many of the cabinet-makers who had worked in the Empire style, such as JacobDesmalter, Felix Remond, and P.A. Bellanger, continued to produce furniture with a great deal of success.
However, Napoleonic motifs and
mounts gradually disappeared, and the
Empire style was slowly watered down as severity gave way to comfort. Strict linearity eventually relaxed into the occasional curve in a nostalgia for Rococo style. Overall, forms became heavier and more solid, replacing the Empire love of rectilinear elegance. As elsewhere in Europe, furniture became bulkier. Inlays became more common and mounts gradually became smaller, or disappeared altogether.
STYLE DIFFERENCES Restauration-style furniture can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from the
simpler, more domestic Empire pieces (see pp.200-01). The surfaces of Restauration pieces tend to be even simpler and less decorated than those found on French Empire furniture, which was typically designed to create an opulent effect.
SECRETAIRE A ABATTANT
This flame-veneered mahogany writing cabinet is raised on claw feet and has a moulded cornice above a pair of Gothic-carved, glazed doors, enclosing shelves, above drawers. A frieze drawer fitted for writing is set above cupboard doors flanked by scrolls. c.1820.
DRESSING TABLE
This is a mahogany dressing table with a swing-frame mirror set above a platform with two small drawers above another drawer. The dressing table stands on C-scroll supports and has a shaped platform base. c.1825.
FAUTEUILS AUX DAUPHINS
This set of six mahogany armchairs, made by Pierre-Antoine Bellanger, has straight top rails terminating in carved scrolls. The curved arms are carved with dolphin heads and each chair has a padded, upholstered seat with a plain seat rail and is supported on sabre legs. c.1815.
CHARLES X DRESSING TABLE
This dressing table is made of burr elm inlaid with amaranth depicting stylized foliage. The top section has an oval mirror with carved supports in the shape of swans. The table top is made of white marble. The lower section consists of a frieze drawer above two carved consoles. The piece terminates in a shaped platform base and flattened bun feet. 1825
BOIS CLAIRS
Restauration furniture was usually made of oak, but it was increasingly veneered in lighter woods, the so-called bois clairs. This change in tone began in 1806, when the British blockaded the importation of mahogany to France from its colonies. As a result, local woods became more popular, including walnut, sycamore, ash, elm, yew, plane, beech, and, perhaps most characteristically of all, decorative bird’s-eye maple.
Mahogany, being expensive, was reserved for the most lavish interiors, so its use was often an indicator of the high value of a piece of furniture.
Traditionally, the Duchesse de Berry the daughter-in-law of Charles X, is credited with the introduction of bois clairs, but this appears to be an unfounded myth. Mahogany, however, continued to be extensively employed both as a veneer – where the decorative effect of its figure was much exploited – and in the solid.
With the decline in use of mounts, various timbers, particularly ebony, and metals such as brass or pewter, were inlaid instead. However, their treatment was always restrained. Some furniture even included plaques of painted porcelain.
GOTHIC STYLE
Towards the end of the Restauration period, the Romantic-revival styles gradually became evident in French furniture design.
These were probably first hinted at in Pierre de La Mesangere’s Collection de meubles et objets de goat, published between 1802 and 1835 in the Journal des Dames et des Modes. Here, La Mesangere adapted the severe, architectural style of Perrier and Fontaine to create a simple, domestic style for the middle classes. He also began introducing the motifs that
would dominate the next epoch –Gothic motifs, otherwise known as the Troubadour style.
Unlike the Chinese style, which was completely forgotten in early 19th-century France but played an important role in Britain at the time, the Gothic style did create a small impact. For example, in 1804, the cabinetmaker, Mansion the Younger, suggested a Gothic-style piece for Napoleon.
However, it was not until the late 1820s and 30s, that the pointed arches so typical of the Gothic style started appearing on Empire-style furniture.
CIRCULAR CENTRE TABLE
This table is made from rosewood inlaid with fruitwood and marquetry. The circular top, and the four frieze drawers below, are raised on a columnar support, which has four splayed legs that terminate in paw feet on brass casters. c.1830.
CHARLES X OCCASIONAL TABLE
The top of this oval rosewood table is inlaid with a panel of Gothic tracery and is bordered with a boxwood rolled moulding. The frieze has a single writing-slide drawer. The table stands on six turned legs joined by a double-baluster stretcher. c.1830.
This mahogany meridienne has one end higher than the other, and an elegant, curved, padded back. The frame of the sofa has scrolling sides, a plain frieze, and stands on volute feet. 1820
This table has a black-and-grey-veined Saint Anne marble top set above a plain frieze. The massive columnar support is baluster shaped although it has been facetted. The three scrolled feet are similarly angular and are square in section.
MERIDIENNE
MARBLE-TOPPED TABLE
The mahogany frieze is unadorned Will) the mounts typical of the French Empire style.
The scrolled feet show a move away from the strict angular design of the previous epoch.

Davenports
An entry made in the 1790s in the records of the cabinetmakers Gillow (est. c.1730) of Lancaster states: “Captain Davenport, a desk”. This is thought to be the first recorded example of the small writing cabinets now called by the Captain’s name. It is not known whether he ordered the desk for his own use, or as a gift for a lady.
For most of the 19th century the Davenport was generally used by women. The basic form, consisting of a small chest-of-drawers with a desk compartment on top, changed very little over the century or so during which most examples were produced. However, there were many minor variations. Most Davenports have four drawers that open at the side of the base sections, with simulated drawer fronts on the opposite sides. Just above the drawers there may be pull-out slides to hold papers or finished letters. Some examples depart from this pattern, with cupboards concealing drawers, but either way the arrangement is symmetrical, with dummy drawers or cupboard doors matching the real ones. Many Davenports are fitted with casters, allowing them to be moved about easily; because of their free-standing nature, they should be well veneered and finished to the same standard on all four sides.
The top section typically comprises a desk with a sloping lid inset with a leather writing surface, and a flat ledge behind it enclosed by a brass or wooden gallery.
One or two small drawers for storing writing implements and ink pull out sideways below. The finest examples have ingeniously concealed hinged drawers.
The first Davenport has a top section that slides forward to accommodate the writer’s legs and is anchored by a simple iron rod sliding into holes lined up in the top and bottom. As the Victorian period progressed (from c.1847), the desk section was more often fixed in the writing position, and supported on elaborately scrolled or turned supports or brackets, allowing a recessed space for more leg room, and emphasizing the width of the piece. However, the catalogue of the firm of William Smee & Sons (est. 1817) of Finsbury Pavement in London, which is undated but was probably produced c.1840, shows examples with both sliding- and fixed-desk sections.
While mahogany was the most popular wood for Davenports, some of the finest examples were made in rosewood,
particularly during the Regency period. These were often embellished with stringing lines of brass, a contrast carried further by the use of decorative brass drawer-handles, gilt-brass galleries at the back, and brass tappings on the feet.
Most Victorian Davenports had wooden galleries, and these could take the form of simple mouldings, turned spindles, or lacy fretwork. Turned wooden drawer knobs also replaced earlier brass handles, but some of the finest mid-19th-century Davenports had brass galleries and gilt-brass candle sconces on rotating arms fixed to the sides of the desks toward the back.
The popularity of the Davenport continued until the end of the l 9th century, but few of these late examples, often over-ornamented and of generally clumsy proportions, matched the quality of craftsmanship of those made up to the 1860s.
• CONSTRUCTION two main types: the plain Regency
box-type, which has a reading slope that slides.
forward, creating a comfortable knee aperture, and the type introduced c.1840, which has a rising superstructure and a recessed knee aperture
• WOODS the most common woods used were rosewood, mahogany, and burr-walnut.
• MECHANISM the rise on the mechanical Davenport runs on a leather belt and weights; it is released by a spring lock that opens to reveal pigeon holes and drawers.
• COLLECTING the Regency Davenport tends to be more popular than later Victorian examples; although collectable, Davenports are not as usable as bureaux; good-quality examples are well finished on all sides, and also on the inside.