[Illustration: Rare Louis XVI chair--an original from Fontainebleau.]

[Illustration: The American Empire sofa, when not too elaborate, is a
very beautiful article of furniture.]




_The Empire_


The French Revolution made a tremendous change in the production of
beautiful furniture, as royalty and the nobility could no longer
encourage it. Many of the great artists died in poverty and many of them
went to other countries where life was more secure.

After the Revolution there was wholesale destruction of the wonderful
works of art which had cost such vast sums to collect. Nothing was to
remain that would remind the people of departed kings and queens, and a
committee on art was appointed to make selections of what was to be
saved and what was to be destroyed. That committee of "tragic comedians"
set up a new standard of art criticism; it was not the artistic merits
of a piece of tapestry, for instance, that interested them, but whether
a king or queen dared show their heads upon it. If so, into the flames
it went. Thousands of priceless things were destroyed before they
finished their dreadful work.

When Napoleon came into power he turned to ancient Rome for inspiration.
The Imperial Cæsars became his ideal and gave him a wide field in which
to display his love for splendor, uncontrolled by any true artistic