A PAIR OF FRENCH EBONIZED FAUTEUILS

The impressive à l'antique design of these fauteuils is inspired by the renewed interest in the designs of classical antiquity in the Empire period, promoted by Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine through their influential Receuil des Décorations Intérieures, first published in full in 1812.
The original model can possibly be attributed to Henri Jacob (d. 1824), maître in 1779, cousin of his famous confrère Georges Jacob, on the basis of an identical apparently signed model by him illustrated in M. Beurdeley, Jacob et son Temps, Saint-Rémy-en-l'Eau, 2002, p. 80.