This sedan chair was conceived in the Louis XVI 'antique fashion' and decorated with classical ornamentation. The corner acrotia of the arched cornice are enriched with female masks, from which flowers entwine the angle pillars, while the central frieze is enriched with 'baguette' festoons of Apollo's triumphal laurels issuing from flowered arabesque scrolls of Roman foliage above flowered tablets. The engravings by the architect Jean-Francois de Neufforge, a member of Caylus's circle and collaborator with Le Lorrain on the publication of Julien-David Le Roy's 'Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece'(1758), played a key role in the creation and dissemination of the goût gréc.
An engraved design for a related brouette, basically a two-wheeled sedan chair, is illustrated in J. Damase, Carriages, London, 1968, p. 30, ill. 17.
A sedan chair of similar shape and construction is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, (Inventory No. W.10-1966).