BEFORE the youthful Louis XVI and his still more youthful spouse ascended the throne of France, the mobiliary style that we know as "Louis Seize" had already, ripened into a type sufficiently characteristic to be plainly distinguished from the modes of furniture expression inseparably associated with the reign of the fifteenth Louis. During the twenty years preceding the tragic downfall of the ancien regime and the brutal murder of the king and queen, the style of furniture that was rising into high favour prior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century attained its consummate development and reached the high-water mark of artistic excellence in design and execution in the field of Gallic effort.

Charming as the work of this period is in itself, it is of especially significant interest to us because of the influence it had upon the designs of Thomas Sheraton - the inspiration and wealth of decorative motifs it supplied him from which he evolved by discriminating adaptation what is unquestionably one of the most beautiful and graceful phases of furniture development in England and America, the last great phase, in fact, that marked the full fruition of the rich and varied mobiliary history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With this process of ingenious adaptation Sheraton incorporated a goodly measure of his own individuality. After Sheraton, Duncan Phyfe, the American Sheraton, made large use of Louis Seize motifs - whether derived through the medium of Sheraton's designs or directly from the French models, it matters not - and thereby contributed the best and truest element in the work of the American Empire period.

In a previous chapter we have said that the Brothers Adam anticipated in their designs the classic spirit manifested in the Louis Seize period. The breath of a renewed and revivified classicism was in the air. The impetus toward this classic trend in design was strengthened by the results of the excavations and researches at Herculaneum and Pompeii, which attracted profound attention in the middle of the eighteenth century. The interpretation of classic motifs and expression in the designs of the Adelphi was quite independent of any French medium, but the taste and effort at realisation were coincident and nearly synchronous on both sides of the Channel. Hepplewhite derived most of his classic feeling from the designs of the Adams but he also drew a measure of inspiration from contemporary French furniture. Sheraton, on the other hand, was far more deeply influenced by Louis Seize models, and in order to understand and appreciate him fully it is necessary to know somewhat of the type to which he was so largely a debtor.

For this reason the Louis Seize chapter has been placed just before the Sheraton chapter and after the chapter on Hepplewhite, who occupied a middle ground between the Adelphi and Sheraton.

An examination of Louis Seize furniture and a subsequent comparison with Sheraton's designs will reveal a striking similarity, not only in decorative motifs, but even in contour. These points of resemblance will be noted under their appropriate heads.

PLATE XXIX. LOUIS SEIZE SOFA, ARM-CHAIR AND STOOL By Courtesy of Mr. C. J. Charles, of London and New York.