French

French furniture is not one tradition but a succession of court styles, each with a name, and each invented to be seen in a particular room. The court set the standard, Paris made it, and the rest of Europe bought it and called it French. That is why the periods here are named after kings and regimes rather than after shapes: the regime is the style.

The craft is organised around two guilds, and the distinction explains most of what you see. Menuisiers worked in solid wood and made the frame; ébénistes veneered it, and were the ones allowed to work in rare imported timber. A piece that looks like mahogany and does not feel like solid mahogany is usually the second guild's work, and often the better made of the two.

The aesthetic is an ensemble rather than an object. Gilt bronze is not decoration but a way of protecting edges while catching light; marquetry is a picture made of wood; and a chair is expected to belong to a room, a wall and a scheme. Read French work by asking what room it was built for — the answer dates it more precisely than any mark.

The grand siècle runs Louis XIV to Louis XVI: gilt bronze and Boulle marquetry under the Sun King, comfort and curved forms under Louis XV, and a return to the straight line under Louis XVI — each a shift in how much ornament a room could bear.

The Revolution breaks the sequence and restarts it. Directoire strips the gilt out; Empire puts it back with military symmetry; Restauration softens it; Louis-Philippe turns it toward bourgeois comfort.

The Second Empire is the last court style. After it French taste splits — Art Nouveau takes the line, Art Deco takes the geometry — and the named-period tradition ends where the modern market begins.