Rococo furniture

The Rococo style of furniture and design was born against the formal and austere look of the Baroque
era.  After French monarch Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Rococo-style characteristics ushered in optimism
with light, feminine touches including shell and floral motifs. The Rococo era was marked by a newfound
enjoyment of life, and the furniture and art of the time reflected that.  Artisans traded in the regal
sobriety of the Baroque for a softer, more playful aesthetic.  It is commonly referred to as the Louis XV
style, though there was a much broader European influence.

While Rococo-style furniture is still opulent, the color palette is much lighter and uses pastel colors
instead of dark, symmetrical Baroque features. Baroque furniture used excessive and heavy gold,
dramatic shadows, and depicted serious scenes in its carvings.  History’s best Rococo furniture makers
used elements to create lighter airy themes with s-curved cabriole legs, organic themes like gardens,
seashells, and vines.

Rococo Furniture Characteristics

The Rococo style of furniture came into style in 1715 when it replaced Baroque, but was quickly
overshadowed by Neo-classicism and a resurgence of Greco-Roman design. However, Rococo furniture
had a revival in the 1840s and was produced during the Victorian era until the 1870s. So how can you
identify a Rococo or Rococo-revival style furniture piece?

If you have a piece of Rococo furniture that needs refinishing, Aaron’s Touch Up has the knowledge and
expertise to handle antique furniture restoration. This French style is still popular in homes today,
though it requires more maintenance than other antiques.

The characteristics of Rococo furniture are beautiful and elaborate. It represents freedom and creativity
from previous staid styles. With flowing curves and organic motifs, the Rococo style of furniture is a
rejection of rules and a desire for leisure and comfort. Bring that into your life with refinishing services
from Aaron’s Touch Up and Restoration.

http://www.aaronstouchup.com/history-of-rococo-furniture/

Furniture of the Rococo

France in the 17th century was a serious place. The king ruled with absolute authority, the power of the
Catholic Church was unquestionable, and France grew from the reach of its empire. Art and architecture
reflected this, realized in an ornate but dramatic style known as the Baroque.

Then, the king of France died in 1715 and his son took the throne. Too young to rule, the new king was
controlled by regents. The aristocrats of France were no longer required to maintain a strict courtly
presence, and retreated to private estates where they started spending more and more time on
enjoying life. Their new arts reflected this. This was the origin of the Rococo.
The Rococo was an artistic movement of the 18th century, in which the wealthy rejected the regal
sobriety of the Baroque for a lighter, softer aesthetic. Being an art form of leisure, the Rococo
manifested itself perhaps most clearly in decorative arts. In a world where leisure, comfort, and art were
all intertwined, furniture reigned supreme.

A typical Rococo interior

What Rococo Means in Relation to Antique Furniture

This type of furniture originally came about as an offshoot of architectural styles popular in the late
1600s. By the early 1700s, it was seen in all forms of artistic expression in France including painting,
sculpture, and interior design.

The highly embellished furniture decorating rooms of this period often featured whimsical themes
incorporating asymmetry, curves, and gold finishes - these are true Rococo pieces. This grand style is
most often associated with the reign of Louis XV moving into that of Louis XVI. It was supplanted by the
more subdued Neoclassic style as its popularity waned.
When it comes to antiques, Americans are barely making the cut (especially when compared to other
countries). The earliest furniture documented as having been made on these shores dates from about
1650, a mere three and a half centuries of cabinetry. Some of the most popular furniture, like those
known as Art Deco or Mid-Century Modern, aren't actually considered antiques at all. An antique, by the
definition set forth by the United States Customs Service, is something at least 100 years old or more.

Rococo sculpture

Rococo Sculpture

The rococo is the flimsiest of all the generic labels used by art historians, and does not at all imply a
profound change from the baroque. Indeed the term 'rococo' applied to sculpture should be understood
as describing not a different style from the baroque. but merely a variation on the style brought to
fruition by Bernini and his contemporaries. One may, however, talk about rococo qualities in a work of
sculpture - informality, gaiety, a concern for matters of the heart and a self-conscious avoidance of
seriousness.

Probably the most successful sculptor of the first half of the eighteenth century was Guillaume
Coustou (1677-1746), Director of the French Academy from 1707, who continued the baroque trend of
his uncle Coysevox. ,Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762). is a more interesting figure. whose feeling for the
antique led him to anticipate the later trend towards neoclassicism, as in his fountain of the Rue de
Grenelle. His equestrian statue of Louis XV, destroyed in the Revolution, was more severe than
Girardon's statue of Louis XIV, and it was criticized by Cochin as being too polished and finished, but, like
the former.

Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-85) reflects with remarkable precision the shifts in taste and ideas of the
Ancien Regime, and he was to cultivate also the friendship of the Philosophers and attempt to give some
of their ideas a sculptural form. This work was intended for Frederick the Great's garden at Sans Souci,
and although of great elegance and lightness of feeling, it remains within the tradition of the garden
sculpture at Versailles. In 1755 through Marigny, he was given the commission for a monument to Louis
XV to be placed in the Place Royal in Rheims. Pigalle's solution to the problem of the allegory of a royal
statue illuminates the way in which the Enlightenment caused artists to reconsider their use of imagery.

The most extreme manifestation of the rococo in sculpture is to be found in Germany, although it is
usually of a less sophisticated character than the decorative art of Paris salons of the early eighteenth
century. The sculpture produced in the German principalities in the eighteenth century is too diverse to
permit generalization, but much of the best and most characteristic work of the period shows a
remarkable continuation of the earlier spirit of the high baroque. Balthazar Permoser (1651-1732), the
Dresden sculptor, had studied in Italy in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but his desire to
bring pictorial qualities into sculpture was certainly derived from a study of Bernini's works, and he left
as a personal testament a now-destroyed group of Painting Embracing Sculpture. None the less, the
elegance of his figures is unmistakably a development of the late baroque, and nothing illustrates more
clearly the ambiguity of the term 'rococo' as an art-historical style than these German works of the
eighteenth century.

The only full-blooded successors to the Gesamtkunstwerken or total art works of Bernini, such as the
Cathedra Petri, are to be found in the Catholic churches of southern Germany, which are conceived with
a total vision that once again breaks down the distinction between architecture, sculpture and fine art
painting. They were not, however, the product of a mastermind like Bernini whose genius enabled him
to cope with all the diverse skills required, but were created by small groups of craftsmen who would
take on the problem of creating a church interior with all its fittings from start to finish, sometimes
designing the church as well.

Étienne Maurice Falconet (1 December 1716 – 24 January 1791) was a

French baroque, rococo and neoclassical sculptor, best-known for his equestrian statue of Peter the
Great, the Bronze Horseman(1782), in St. Petersburg, Russia, and for the small statues he produced in
series for the Royal Sévres Porcelain Manufactory[1][2]

Étienne Maurice Falconet

Falconet's most famous artwork, Bronze Horseman, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Saint
Petersburg, Russia

Aleijadinho
Antônio Francisco Lisboa (b. 1730 or 1738 – November 18, 1814), more commonly known
as Aleijadinho, was a sculptor and architect of Colonial Brazil, noted for his works on and in
various churchesof Brazil. His works are considered some of the best examples of Portuguese colonial
architecture in Brazil.

Aleijadinho
François Gaspard Adam

François Gaspard Adam, Minerva

François Gaspard Adam (May 23, 1710 – August 18, 1761) was a French rococo sculptor.

A member of the Adam family of painters, François was born at Nancy, and studied under his
father, Jacob-Sigisbert. He later followed his two brothers to Rome in 1730, before moving to Paris. In
1740, he took second in the Prix de Rome competition, but later won the contest and returned to Rome
in 1742 to study at the Académie de France's campus there. From 1747 to 1760, Adam was the principal
sculptor of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Most of his work decorates the grounds at
Frederick's Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam. He died in Paris.

Rococo revival

Extract

A renewed interest among artists, writers, and collectors between c. 1820 and 1870 in Europe,
predominantly in France, in the Rococo style in painting, the decorative arts, architecture, and sculpture.
The revival of the Rococo served diverse social needs. As capitalism and middle-class democracy
triumphed decisively in politics and the economy, the affluent and well-born put increasing value on the
aristocratic culture of the previous century: its arts, manners and costumes, and luxury goods....

England

The Queen Anne style was a restrained version, and the Chippendale a more elaborate version of the
Rococo. In 1721, England lifted heavy import duties on mahogany. The hardness of the wood made
possible the intricate carving in Chippendale designs

Rococo Revival in 19th century America: 1840-1870

The Rococo Revival style was introduced to America around 1840 and remained dominant throughout
the 1860s. Referred to at that time as the Louis XIV style - though it is even closer to the Louis XV style -
it is much bolder than its 18th century model. Ornament is carved in higher relief, and decorative detail
is usually far more realistic. Rococo Revival examples are usually smaller than 18th-century prototypes.

John Henry Belter

Born and trained as a cabinetmaker and woodcarver in Germany, Belter migrated to New York where,
by 1844, he had his own business. He continued it until his death in 1863. His furniture is usually
of laminatedrosewood with distinctive pierced and carved decoration. Best known for his chairs, Belter
also made some matching tables, sofas, couches, beds, cabinets and secretaries.

Some Rococo Revival pieces are intricately carved and pierced, made possible by a new technique
introduced by John Henry Belter of New York. His was one of several workshops using wood for
intricately carved Rococo forms. His use of lamination on Rococo Revival pieces was widely imitated.