Rococo Furniture: Curved Legs, Shells and Gilt Mounts

Rococo furniture is furniture from roughly 1720 to 1770, with curved legs, bulging fronts and asymmetrical ornament in the form of shells and scrolls. It is lighter and smaller than Baroque furniture, built for intimate rooms and often decorated with gilt bronze mounts, veneers and lacquer.

Facts

From Baroque to Rococo

Baroque furniture was large, rectangular and heavy, built for the salons of palaces. When Louis XIV died in 1715 French nobles began to move to smaller houses in Paris. There people wanted lighter, softer and more personal furniture. That produced Rococo, which took its name from rocaille, shell and grotto ornament. Read about the period under Rococo and French Régence and Rococo and about the earlier style under Baroque.

At the same time the interior became a whole. Walls, mirrors, furniture and objects were designed together in the same form. See the interiors Hôtel de Soubise and Amalienburg, or the guide to Rococo in art and the architecture of Amalienburg and Wieskirche.

The forms

The most characteristic feature is the curved leg, the cabriole leg, which bends outwards at the knee and inwards towards the foot and ends in a small scroll foot. The front of a chest of drawers bulges, in a form called bombé or serpentine. The back of a chair is curved to the back. Nothing is straight, and nothing is symmetrical in a strict way: the ornament winds across the surface.

The chest of drawers, the commode, was invented around 1700 and became Rococo’s favourite piece of furniture. The Rococo chest and Cressent’s commode have bulging fronts, gilt bronze mounts, ormolu, and rich veneers. Charles Cressent was one of France’s leading cabinetmakers. Console tables and mirrors, such as the Rococo console, belong to the same world. During the Rococo period many different woods were also used in the same piece, so that the veneer formed flowers and patterns that changed colour with the light in the room.

Cabinetmakers and comfort

French furniture-making was divided between joiners, who built the carcase, and ébénistes, who laid veneer and marquetry; the word comes from ebony. The writing desk Bureau du Roi, begun by Oeben and finished in 1769 by Riesener, has a roll top and rich decoration and is counted as the masterpiece of the time. Rococo comfort is seen in the bergère and the armchair, built for conversation and with cushions and armrests shaped to the arm.

Rococo also produced smaller furniture for particular purposes: writing tables, dressing tables, sewing tables and small tables for tea and card games. The home for the first time became a collection of furniture for different activities. In France furniture was painted in pastel colours or lacquered; Chinese lacquer, chinoiserie, was especially popular. See the Chinese Pavilion.

England and Sweden

In England Thomas Chippendale developed a Rococo version of his own in mahogany. His book The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754) showed chairs, mirrors and tables in French, Chinese and Gothic forms; see the Chippendale chair and the guide to the Chippendale chair.

In Sweden Rococo had its time during the Age of Liberty, roughly 1720–1772. Swedish joiners adapted the French style to native woods, birch and pine, and to calmer forms. The style passed in the time of Gustav III into Gustavian with straight legs, such as the Gustavian chair, and into a Neoclassical language of form, see Neoclassicism. How to recognise a Rococo chest is described in the guide to dating an antique chest of drawers and in furniture styles in chronological order; learn the terms in furniture terms and see the category furniture.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What are Rococo’s typical curved legs called?