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Some of Napoleon’s [military] campaign furniture, such as the folding tables, chairs and stools by Jacob, is so extremely modern that it looks as if it could be by Jacques Grange.” The introduction of Egyptian motifs is often attributed to Bonaparte’s return from Egypt after his military campaign in 1799, Chevallier notes that the roots of France’s Egyptomania actually reach back to the ancien régime. Already in 1787, renowned cabinetmaker Georges Jacob had added an exquisitely carved winged sphinx to a fauteuil destined for Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir at the Château de Fontainebleau. The most famous French furniture-making dynasties, the Jacob family began its rise to fame with patriarch Georges Jacob, a highly creative cabinetmaker who started his career under Louis XVI. His sons, Georges II and François-Honoré-Georges, took over from 1796 to 1802, signing their pieces—which included the original Malmaison dining room chairs—Jacob Frères. When Georges II died, François-Honoré-Georges worked with his father under the name Jacob-Desmalter; during the go-go Empire years
Camp furniture maker Gregory Kane (w. c. 1829-1865) of Dublin. The heat of India and Africa led Victorian designers of campaign furniture to produce chairs, sofas, and beds that incorporated a great deal more caning than had been used in the Regency period. London firms such as James Clifton, J. and A. Carters, Leveson and Sons, John Alderman, and John Ward specialized in beds and rolling chairs completely collapsible and designed for ease of transportation. Less elaborate campaign furniture typified by the Roorkhee-pattern folding chair, very portable on campaign as well as on hunting and camping expeditions. The excellence of the design was later acknowledged in the Wassily chair of 1925 designed by Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), the Basculant chair of 1928 designed by Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1929, and the Safari chair of 1933 by the Danish designer Kaare Klint (1888-1954). portability, lightness, and ease of assembly--all characteristics of the Roorkhee chair--became more important than elegance and comfort. Elaborate Victorian furnishings gave way to more austere campaign furniture characterized by X-folding legs, canvas seats, and an absence of upholstery. Such utilitarian pieces were mass produced to a set design and thus lack the individuality found in the custom-made designs of the Victorian era.
British campaign furniture grew out of a culture engaged in building an empire worthy of the Romans. The scale and extravagance of the furniture grew with the empire. While the imperial attitude that spawned it is long gone, this remarkable furniture remains, elegant and ingenious, for us to admire.
In the Georgian period good pieces of campaign furniture were available only to officers of high rank with deep pockets. In Victorian times, by contrast, even mid-level officers began to take whole suites of campaign furniture with them. Such suites were made in Britain according to the style of the day and would not have looked out of place in a fashionable London town house. In 1865, for example, when the English campaign furniture makers S. W. Silver and Company exhibited a line of folding furniture at the New Zealand Exhibition in Dunedin, the Reports and Awards of Jurors stated that the company's portable chairs "although fit for luxuriantly furnished apartments in point of appearance, can yet be folded and removed with all the readiness of a camp stool. Mahogany or walnut chiffonier holding a knockdown couch, folding round or oval table, collapsible easy chairs, and four dining chairs stuffed with horsehair and covered with wool, damask, or leather. It was made by Ross and Company of Dublin from walnut grown on the family estate at Bective, Ireland.
18th century english french period antiques | antiques price guide