(8) French Gilt Wood Louis XVI Style Upholstered Dining Chairs. Includes 2 arm chairs and 6 side chairs, making a complete set. Beautiful floral patterns, and delicately carved wood. Label on underside indicates they likely came from New York, and were made using palm fiber. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 23 1/2 x 18 1/2 x 35 in. 

Louis XVI style, also called Louis Seize, is a style of architecture, furniture, decoration and art which developed in France during the 19-year reign of Louis XVI (1774-1792) which ended with the French Revolution. It saw the final phase of the Baroque style as well as the birth of French Neoclassicism. The style was a reaction against the elaborate ornament of the preceding Baroque period. It was inspired in part by the discoveries of Ancient Roman paintings, sculpture, and architecture in Herculaneum and Pompeii. Its features included the straight column, the simplicity of the post-and-lintel, the architrave of the Greek temple. It also expressed the Rousseau-inspired values of returning to nature and the view of nature as an idealized and wild but still orderly and inherently worthy model for the arts to follow. Superbly crafted desks and cabinets were created for the Palace of Versailles and other royal residences by cabinetmakers Jean-Henri Riesener and David Roentgen, using inlays of fine woods (particularly mahogany) and decorated with gilded bronze and mother of pearl. Equally fine sets of chairs and tables with marquetry were made by Riesener and Georges Jacob. This period also saw the innovation of wallpaper and printed fabric becoming an important part of interior design, thanks to new processes developed by Jean-Baptiste Reveillon. The characteristic elegance of the pieces from this period are considered some of the finest of all the Louis periods, and has been routinely revived since the mid 19th Century when British aristocrats who have salvaged many pieces during the Revolution sold them off to wealthy Americans, influencing the English-speaking world for decades after.