Rococo Revival Furniture

Domed top with leaf decoration and flower heads, cylindrical body with glass panels.

Of open scrolling outline with beaded scrolls hung with pearl-shaped drops and flower-heads, above a hanging sphere. Electrified.

This elegant medium-sized Rococo Revival chandelier, dating to the late 19th to early 20th century, showcases the ornate charm of French-inspired design. Crafted from bronze, the fra...

Graceful French Rococo style five-arm gilt bronze chandelier with subtle undulating movement. A 19th century piece originally run by gas but converted to electric. Can be used with c...

Chandelier Swedish Venetian 19th Century Sweden. Tall venetian chandelier with 6 arms for light. Needs to be rewired for US use.

A black and white rectangular onyx base supports a finely cast bronze sculpture of a sitting putti upholding a bronze basket. Includes a matching unique black and white shade...

This fabulously designed Rococo Revival dining table has maple veneer marquetry and crochet mahogany in the center.

Bronze, dark-brown patina, unmarked. Measures: Height: 23” Width: 14” The notion of an “American Rococo” seems a contradiction in terms. The very word rococo is as French as Camembert. It connotes a style that reigned along with Louis XV in the aristocratic decadence of the 18th Century. It was garlanded, nonchalant, associated with erotic marshmallow nudes by Francois Boucher and foppish courtiers costumed as shepherds pretending they understood Jean-Jacques Rousseau when all they really wanted was romantic dalliance in the formal gardens of Versailles. In the history of painting it produced but one great artist, Antoine Watteau. By contrast, Americans of the period are remembered as the flinty inheritors of New England Puritans, full of rectitude and having not a moment for furbelow or frippery. Such few painters as were around included hard-nosed realists like John Singleton Copley and Charles Willson Peale. Well, as it turns out, life once again acts according to the principle of paradox. There was an American rococo. It came to us indirectly via England disguised under the name Chippendale. Now for the first time the style receives comprehensive survey in the exhibition “American Rococo, 1750-1775: Elegance in Ornament.” Jointly organized by New York’s Metropolitan Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it opens here Sundaywith a spread of some 170 works of decorative art and a conscientious catalogue with essays by Met and LACMA curators Morrison H. Heckscher and Leslie Greene Bowman. There are at least two ways of looking at the decorative arts. Connoisseurs appreciate their design and craftsmanship. Those of sociological bent examine objects of material culture for their revelations of history and the temper of the times. Actually neither view is complete without the other. Stylistically the rococo reveals a longing for intimacy in its small scale and an urge to organic nature in its love of stylized vines, tendrils, tiny flowers and seashells. If it were a new manner being promoted by Madison Avenue today it would probably be called “Baroque Lite.” There is an ease about the style that makes it airy, but it has an underlying formality that bespeaks lives of gentrified cultivation rather than beer-bellied sloth. It’s fascinating to examine the flintlock firearms on view and find these weapons of death shaped and decorated with the most exquisite care by wood carvers and metal engravers. All of this is completely consistent with the main currents of 18th-Century European thought. In France, Rousseau sang the virtues of nature and the noble savage like a present-day ecologist. In England, John Locke...

RECORDED: cf. Anna Tobin D’Ambrosio, ed., Masterpieces of American Furniture from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute (Syracuse University Press, Utica, New York, 1999), pp. 85, 86, 87 illus. the Munson-Williams-Proctor tables // cf. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 19th Century America–Furniture and Other Decorative Arts (1970), exhib. cat., [n.p.] no.133 This table is identical to a pair of card tables bearing the stenciled label of Charles A. Baudouine of 335 Broadway, New York, which were acquired by James and Helen Munson Williams of Utica, New York, in May 1852 for their home, Fountain Elms, which is where they remain today as part of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute collection. The Williams tables were billed as “1 Rosewood Multiform Table” at $160 for the pair, and they were indeed “multiform” in that they could be used separately and folded as a pair of console tables, opened as a pair of card tables, or joined together as a center table. The present table varies essentially in the fact that it does not include the mechanism that would have allowed it to be attached to another to form a center table. Of French descent, Baudouine was born in New York in 1808. He made his debut as a cabinetmaker in the New York directory of 1829/30, where he is listed at 508 Pearl Street. By 1839/40 he relocated to Broadway, where he remained in business at various addresses until about 1854. A sense of the scale of Baudouine’s operation is given by German immigrant cabinetmaker Ernest Hagen...

Stunning large antique Dresden porcelain vase in the shape of an urn, featuring a luscious pink color with gilded accents and a courting scene. Signed / hallmarked " Dresden " with w...

20th Century Original Oil Painting by Austrian artist VW Wolf. "Family of the artist". Painted in 20th century, it is known to have been collected by European Elite

A fine Italian 18th century giltwood carved console with the original marble top.

Pair of Magnificent Antique French Gilded Sconces. Measures 19 inches from top to bottom, the arms extend to approximately 16.5 inches in width, the interior portion is 5 inches in w...

This charming yet substantial Neo-Rococo bracket was made in Berlin by KPM, the royal porcelain manufactory. Finely modeled, and pierced, the animated design is attributed to Alexand...

Striking seven-arm monumental wall sculpture or wall sconce.