Charles Saunier (made a master in 1752), was a contemporary of Riesener, and worked until the Revolution. He followed the styles of Riesener and Leleu.

The most fashionable ebeniste in the reign of Louis XVI was Martin Carlin, many of whose works are now in the Louvre. On account of his charming and dainty work and the delicacy of his profiles, Carlin is the embodiment of the "style de la Reine" Carlin accomplished for Marie Antoinette what Gouthiere had accomplished for Madame Du Barry. Jean Pafrat acquired fame by working with Carlin. Cabinet-makers made a great many pieces from the designs of Ranson, whose sofas, beds, ottomans, and seats of all kinds were in the newest style. Ranson was famous for his draped beds. He liked flowers and pastoral trophies and looped garlands and ribbons gracefully around a group of shepherds' hats, crooks, spades, trowels, and bird-cages. Garlands of roses among which birds bill and coo, or a quiver of arrows is hidden, often decorate the round or oval forms of his chairs.

Plate XXXII - Louis XV. Arm-Chair - Metropolitan Museum

De Lalonde's designs were especially popular. He considered nothing too trivial for his pencil, for among the plates of his thirteen books on furniture there are many locks and knobs for doors and rosettes for ceilings side by side with commodes, sofas, bookcases, chairs, beds, etc., etc. Many of De Lalonde's models were made for Trianon and Fontainebleau. De Lalonde shows all the popular motives of the day. He is particularly fond of the grooved leg, the leg bound with ribbons, the quiver, the lyre, the garland, the urn, the burning-torch and the ribbon. During the Direc-toire period, he slavishly followed the fashion and then merges into the Empire Style.

Nowhere is the style Louis Seise better shown than in the designs by Lequeu, whose beds look strange to our eyes with their columns formed of bunches of javelins and headboards decorated with quivers full of arrows at each corner.

Sofa By De Lalonde

Lequeu is also addicted to thin vases with busts of Homer, Cicero or Socrates, festooned with garlands, and he likes the burning-torch. His sofas, smothered in drapery with festoons around their crown-shaped domes or canopies, are strikingly like Sheraton's.

Plate XXXV. shows two arm-chairs of the Louis XVI. Style at its height, before any influence of the Empire is felt. In Etienne Levasseur, the coming Empire Style asserts itself strongly. He created furniture in mahogany, surmounted by a gallery of open-work bronze, and bureaux and commodes in the form of a lower part of an armoire. His pieces greatly resemble those that were made in England at the end of the Eighteenth Century. Another ebeniste in whom the new Empire Style is strong, and who was the favorite at Court is Guillaume Benneman, who, with the aid of Thomire (a pupil of Gouthiere), made probably the most important furniture ordered during the reign of Louis XVI.

The commode on Plate XXXVI. is an excellent example of late Louis XVI. It is of mahogany with three rows of drawers, the first row directly under the white marble slab adorned with a delicate frieze of bronze. The bronze handles of the drawers are also finely chiselled, as are also the locks and mouldings. The sides are grooved. The work is signed G. Benneman.

Upon the top stand two candelabra of bronze and white marble, the three lights being held by Cupids. These are of the same period. The statuette of Ganymede on the eagle with Jupiter's thunderbolts in his hand is of an earlier date.

Benneman was particularly fond of mahogany and his heavy pieces - some of his enormous commodes, etc., would be positively hideous were it not for the beautiful brass-work adorning them. Benneman's style is well exhibited in the two buffets in the Louvre, bearing the monogram of Marie Antoinette, and in the great commode in the same gallery, supported by lions' feet and ornamented in the centre with two cooing doves in a garland of flowers, above a Cupid's bow. Like Benneman, Joseph Stockel was a German, who also liked heavy forms. These two men form the next link in the development of style from De Lalonde.

Plate XXXIII - Chippendale Arm-Chair

Molinier considers the continued heaviness the fault of the Germans. He says: "Instead of aiding in its normal development and introducing into it new elements of vitality, the German ebenistes, of which Paris was full, stifled the growth of French furniture and the native artists had not the time fully to assimilate what the foreigners brought with them. The result was a very strange style, heavy in form, and in which very little of the true French taste of charm and elegance is to be found. Among the host of German artists we may note Schlichtig, Charles Richter, Gaspard Schneider, Bergeman, Feuerstein, Frost, Schmitz, J. F. Schwerdferger, and, greatest of all, Adam Weisweiller and David Roentgen."

Weisweiller made many pieces of extreme lightness and grace often adorned with Sevres plaques. Roentgen was famous for his splendid marquetry in light colors and the mechanical devices he added to his furniture. The use of beautiful tapestry characterized this reign and delicate silks in which the feather was a favorite device. The great use of the stripe was also characteristic, and in the days of the Direcioire it became a passion.