EARLY 19TH CENTURY

The sabre legs and lion head terminals of this elegant set of chairs reflect the Etruscan style popular throughout Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Frescoes depicting furniture recently discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum and the publication of the ornament found at these archeological excavations disseminated and popularized this style. Though the most well-known propagator of this form of chair was the French cabinet-maker Henri Jacob, who offered many variations, chairs with lion head terminals and sabre legs can also be seen in Russian and German collections as well as chair designs of the period.