Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France

Studies on the History of Society and Culture

by Leora Auslander

Louis XIV, regency, rococo, neoclassical, empire, art nouveau, and historicist pastiche: furniture styles march across French history as regimes rise and fall. In this extraordinary social history, Leora Auslander explores the changing meaning of furniture from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century, revealing how the aesthetics of everyday life were as integral to political events as to economic and social transformations. Enriched by Auslander's experience as a cabinetmaker, this work demonstrates how furniture served to represent and even generate its makers' and consumers' identities.

Genres: History

512 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 1996

Reviews

[Jennifer Cutler]

I'm just not into the decorative arts enough to care about the furniture profession in pre and post Revolutionary France.