Two Armchairs and Two Side Chairs Enlarge (17MB) Zoom in
French, Paris, about 1735 - 1740 Gilded beech; modern silk
upholstery  H: 3 ft. 7 1/2 in.; W: 2 ft. 6 1/8 in.; D: 2 ft. 8
7/8 in.  Add to Getty Bookmarks  Using an upholstery method
known as à chassis, the chair maker made the comfortably padded
backs, seats, and arms of these chairs easily removable. The
servants of the chairs' owner would have changed the fabric on
the cushions with the seasons of the year, using a heavy damask
or tapestry in the winter and replacing it with a lighter
colored silk in the spring. A brief announcement in the
newspaper informed the fashion-conscious inhabitants of 1700s
Paris when to change their furniture coverings. On June 11,
1759, for example, the weekly newspaper announced that the
winter furniture coverings in the king's apartments at
Versailles had just been replaced by the summer ones.  Scholars
do not know the maker of these chairs, as they were made in the
1730s, before the practice of stamping furniture with