A pair of Louis XVI giltwood curved back bergeres, covered in needlework.

By Philippe-Joseph Pluvinet, Paris, circa 1780.

Each with an elaborate carved foliate cresting and central cartouche to the seat rail. The scrollingand fluted arms supported by a reeded seat rail. The bergeres stand on turned, tapering, reededandfluted legs surmounted at the front with square foliate paterae. Each element of the needleworkupholstery is stitched with an elaborate foliate spray within an ivory white cartouche framedinduck egg blue with further foliate enrichment. The outward-facing surface of the bergeres are, unusually, similarly covered in matching needlework.

Stamped P. Pluvinet (Philippe Joseph Pluvinet, maître in 1754)

His earlier seat furniture designs were typically generous in width and depth with crest, seat rails, arm rests and supports all in elegantly sculpted and moulded forms embellished with scrolls, leaves, flowers and cartouches similar to the trademark cartouches employed by J-B Tilliard I andII;supported on cabriole legs echoing these design motifs. Pluvinet's later furniture shows himembracing the fashion for neoclassical design. His chairs display the more constrained economicalforms and simpler straighter lines of the Louis XVI style with more formalised and streamlineddesign motifs such as paterae, entrelacs and turned tapered and reeded legs. A richly upholsteredsofa or canapé d'alcôve, was in the renowned collection of Jacques Doucet, Paris, which soldin1912. Another canapé by Pluvinet is in musée Carnavalet, Paris (no. MB453). A testament to the style, elegance and enduring quality of seat furniture by Pluvinet is seenina setof four fauteuils made by him which were in the collection of the great French creative genius, aesthete and collector, Hubert de Givenchy (d. 2021) and sold from the Hotel d’Orrouer, Christie’s Paris, 17 June 2022, lot 263 (€151,200)