A “à la Reine” seat

Created at the end of the Régence period and the beginning of Louis XV’s reign, the first instance of the term “à la reine” appears in the Inventaire des meubles de la Couronne, drawn up in 1730: “quatorze chaises à la reine, à châssis, couvertes de damas cramoisi et or, les bois sculptés dorés [fourteen à la reine, à châssis, chairs, covered in crimson and gold damask, the woods carved and gilded] ”. Intended for princesses, these chairs were given pride of place by Marie Leszczynska, who adopted an armchair of this model for her personal use.

The “à la Reine” models feature a flat, slightly sloping back and trapezoidal seat, shorter armrest, and a slightly curved belt at the front. This structure allows women to sit while wearing robes à la française, de rigueur at Versailles at that time. They differ from the more successful “cabriolet” models, with their deeper backrests.

The evolution of joinery towards greater roundness between the Louis XIII and Louis XV styles led to an extension of ornamentation to seat structures, resulting in ever greater intervention by the joiner's hand over the centuries. Curved backrests and crosspieces were adorned with moldings and carvings, detailed with gouges, often depicting light decorations such as shells or flowers.



The “chassis” principle

During the reign of Louis XV, the importance accorded to upholsterers gradually decline, releasing the wooden structure in favor of the chairmaker and sculptor. However, furniture, a term used to designate all textiles, remained an important element of interior design, where the fabrics of seats, tapestries or silks formed a decorative ensemble harmonizing with those of walls and curtains.

Around 1725-1730, the creation of removable “à châssis” seats testifies to the ever-renewed inventiveness of chairmakers, who devised ingenious ways of changing fabric upholstery. In 1752, Jacques-François Blondel (1705 -1774), in his book L'Architecture française [French 

Architecture] (paragraph “Meubles [Furniture]”, 1752), praised the advantages of this system. Indeed, until this date, chairs were “à garnir”, i.e. their fabric was permanently attached to the seat structure with nails. Demanding, refined customers who wished to change their furniture over the course of the year, following tastes or seasons, therefore had to own several sets of furniture, which they used alternately.

The Louis XIV style already offered an intermediate solution to this problem: seats were sometimes covered with slipcovered fabric. At the beginning of the reign of Louis XV, the principle of “châssis” finally made it possible to effectively meet this challenge: joiners upholstered the seat, backrest and armrests on removable frames - or “châssis”. In the second half of the 18th century, this system proved popular with a select clientele who owned at least two different sets of upholstery.

This set of furniture is one of the finest surviving examples of “à chassis” furniture. Here, the chairmaker has taken care to imitate the passementerie elements that usually adorned the contours of textiles, by means of sculpted elements.