Antiques - Paris, France

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1997 by Wendell Garrett

I placed myself by [Voltaire]. I touched the keys in unison with his imagination. I wish you had heard the music. He was all brilliance. He gave me continued flashes of wit.... When he talked our language he was animated with the soul of a Briton. He had bold flights. He had humor. He had an extravagance; he had a forcible oddity of style that the most comical of our dramatis personae could not have exceeded.... At last we came upon religion. Then did he rage. The company went to supper. Monsieur de Voltaire and I remained in the drawing room with a great Bible before us; and if ever two mortal men disputed with vehemence, we did.

James Boswell, Boswell on the Grand Tour, 1764

Voltaire was a complete worldling, loving his ease and, during his peripatetic life, luxuriating in the adornments for which the eighteenth century was renowned. Particularly in France, thanks to the extreme rigor of the guild system, furniture reached such a state of perfection that it was sought after throughout Europe.

French guild regulations rigorously separated the crafts. The menuisier, or joiner, cut, shaped, and assembled the piece of furniture. He also made the moldings, but the carver contributed any relief decoration. When the painter and gilder had finished, the joiner waxed and polished the finished piece. Veneering was performed by the menuisier en ebene, a term later shortened to ebeniste, or cabinetmaker. These craftsmen were in the menuisiers guild. In 1743 the guild statutes were revised, and by 1751 it became obligatory for every master craftsman to stamp his work. This regulation was instituted to counter the competition from nonguild craftsmen, mostly of German or Dutch extraction, who set up workshops in those parts of Paris where the medieval right of asylum was still valid.

The practice of decorating furniture with gilt-bronze mounts obligated the cabinetmakers to call in members of two other guilds, the fondeurs-ciseleurs, who cast and chased the bronze, and the ciseleurs-doreurs, who gilded and finished the metal.

By tradition the menuisiers handed down the secrets of their trade from father to son. The ebenistes, by contrast, were for the most part new men. The majority were French, and pre-eminently Parisian, but there were also Flemings and Germans whose numbers increased as the eighteenth century advanced. Among other reasons they were attracted to France by the exceptional demand for furniture in eighteenth-century Paris.

In addition to being the center of fine craftsmanship, Paris was the resort of Europe, where scholar and aristocratic patron alike, leveled by a freemasonry of the spirit, sharpened their wit in salons and clubs. Until 1789 the city was the arbiter of elegance and taste without a serious rival on the Continent.