One Settee and Ten Armchairs (two bergères, and eight fauteuils)

This suite of matching furniture, a set of ten armchairs and a settee, is all upholstered with tapestry covers each portraying a different bird. Artisans made the frames from solid mahogany, a fashionable but expensive hardwood that had to be imported into France. Beginning in 1806, during the Napoleonic wars, a Continental blockade prevented France from buying mahogany from the English colonies. Although this impediment further increased the price of the wood, it remained extremely popular among the upper classes.

Furniture built in the first decades of the 1800s was heavier and more majestic than earlier styles. In this suite, gilt bronze mounts in the form of rosettes, strands of bellflowers, and leaves decorate the legs, arms, and backs of the chairs and settee.