Antique Empire and Regency Style Sideboards.
French Empire Style Sideboards
Empire sideboards were first hand made in 1802 of the Voyage daps la Basse et Haute Egypte, a collection of drawings by Baron Vivant-Denon, who had accompanied Napoleon on his excursion to Syria and Egypt in 1798-1801, heightened the interest in Egypt that Napoleon’s campaign had itself generated.
Sideboards designed by Napoleon’s architects, Charles Perrier (1764-1838) and Pierre Fontaine (1762-1853), including those at the Tuileries and the Chateau de Malmaison, and pieces produced by makers such as F. H. G. Jacob-Desmalter and L. F. and P. A. Bellange, developed the Empire style. This drew on Greek, Roman and Egyptian furniture, and became popular from England and North America to Germany, Italy and Spain.
This grand, imperial style achieved much of its effect through massive forms and rich ornament. Although an ornate, propagandistic style, it derived great dignity from its clear forms and classical restraint. Motifs such as eagles, lions, caryatids, griffins and sphinxes, taken from Roman, Greek and Egyptian antique examples, appeared on sideboards as ornaments and supports. Tables with monopodia legs, gilt eagle supports, or lion’s paw feet, elegant sofas and ’sleigh’ beds with sweeping S-curved arms and endboards, and klismos and curule chairs, presented classical motifs on a much larger scale than in earlier classical styles. Rich woods such as mahogany, gilt carving and ormolu mounts of anthemions, stars and medallions, characterized Empire oak sideboards.
English Regency Style Sideboards
The English version of this style, known as the Regency, lasted from about 1790 to 1830, when the vogue for relics of antiquity popularized sideboards ornamented with sphinxes, griffins, classical mouldings and other Empire style elements.
Although it reached its peak early in the 19th century, Empire and Regency sideboards represented merely one phase in the evolution of the classical style that would take place in the course of the century when a variety of past idioms would be continually reinterpreted and renewed.