French Furniture Under Louis XV (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from French Furniture Under Louis XVMany people are inclined to see in the Louis XV Style only a very sumptuous and profusely ornamented elegance more in keeping with the pleasures of roues than with the simple family life of sober business folks like the majority of us. True, it is the perfect expression of a frivolous and voluptuous period marked by a passion for pleasure - all pleasure, from the most delicate intellectual and social delights to unalloyed debauchery - a period in which moderation was by no means a ruling virtue. No seat could be more suggestive of love and idleness than a sofa of 1750, nor could any furniture display more florid magnificence than some of the commodes Charles Cressent loaded with ormolu decoration, or some of Philippe Caffieri's elaborate bureaux. In fact, we may sum the matter up by admitting that such works, in spite of the incomparable beauty of the chasing, evoke a financier rolling in wealth rather than a gentleman of noble race.If we consider form alone, we may think the inexhaustible caprices of Rococo wearisome, and its horror of straight lines and symmetry exaggerated. We may legitimately dislike its perpetual convexities and undulations, which sometimes degenerate into very disagreeable excrescences.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.