Rococo Style Antique French Furniture

SUPERB FRENCH ANTIQUE ROCOCO STYLE PAINTED ARMOIRE

The Rococo style of French antique furniture began in the 18th century. It came about as a result of the Baroque artists of the time casting aside their obsession with symmetry and turning to a more aqueous and lucid style. They began focusing on interiors of palatial French mansions of Louis XV’s reign and into the beginning of Louis XVI’s.

ANTIQUE FRENCH CARVED WOODEN OVERMANTLE MIRROR

The popularity of the Rococo style reached its crescendo in the 1730′s, at this stage its usage had become widespread in French culture and began being used in paintings and sculptures and not just in furniture and architecture. It never caught on in England as it was regarded as too “French”. It did however spread throughout the continent of Europe and became the most popular style of its day, with many palaces in Germany and Portugal being decorated in the Rococo Style.

To this day the style is copied, adapted and reinterpreted in the furniture and interior design world. Original Rococo style items from the 1700′s are rare to find but the majority of Rococo style antiques we deal with here at Frenchfinds, are highly crafted reproductions from the late 1800′s or early 1900′s which are equally beautiful.

STUNNING FRENCH ANTIQUE ROCOCO STYLE TRIPLE DOOR ARMOIRE - C1900

For the most part, Rococo is an exclusively interior style, mainly due to the fact that even for the aristocratic classes, moving back to Paris from the Palaces in the country side, redecorating the exterior of their houses would have proved costly.

STUNNING PAIR OF ANTIQUE FRENCH BEDSIDE TABLES WITH SHELVES - ROCOCO STYLE C.1900

The popularity of Rococo style of French antique furniture has proven to be no surprise whatsoever to us at Frenchfinds as it’s so wonderfully decorative and unique. All of our pieces are original and unique, hand carved with some fantastic detailing each with its own personality imbued through the carver. That distinctive shell-like crest will always stick out like a beacon symbolising style, finesse and universal fashion delicacy.

SUPERB FRENCH ANTIQUE ROCOCO STYLE PINK & WHITE ARMOIRE

Painted Antique French Furniture – Examples of The Art of Highlighting

 

Highlighted French Antique Rococo Style Armoire

 

Lots of people love the different colours we use on our French furniture at FrenchFinds and lately we’ve had a lot of requests for highlighting. Over the years we have painted a lot of french antique furniture ourselves but have also matched bespoke requests. The term ‘highlighting’ is pretty  self-explanatory but for those of you that want to have gain an insight I would be happy to explain with some examples!

French Antique Carved Highlighted Armoire

What is Highlighting?

Highlighting is essentially the use of contrasting colours to bring out a feature, usually a carving or recess, on a piece of french antique furniture. It is generally used when one single solid colour makes a French antique piece of furniture appear too blocky.

There are many forms of highlighting possible the main types are;

• Traditional Highlighting, which is the use of a light colour on top of a dark colour in order to bring a detail, carving or feature to the fore;

• Reverse Highlighting which is the use of a dark colour on top of a light one to achieve the same effect and

• Sumptuous Gilding which is the application of a fine gold or metal leaf on to any solid surface.

Super Shiny Polished Vintage Steel (Furniture)

Frenchfinds has been experimenting with a slightly different distressed furniture look. With a little bit of stripper and a lot of elbow grease shiny metal furniture is now slipping silently into our shop. We have tried it out on both French and English, antique and vintage pieces and it seems to work really well. It’s a new alternative for us, away from our traditional ‘shabby chic’ painted style or original wood pieces which is an enjoyable addition to our stock.

From our extra shiny steel & brass office cabinet to the burnished ‘distressed’ gun metal finish of French antique beds, we’re really pleased with the results, here are some of the recent images;

Super Shiny Polished Vintage Steel & Brass Office Cabinet

Burnished & Polished Steel Vintage French Bistro Chairs – Distressed Style

Shiny Burnished / Polished Iron & Brass Antique French Bed

Shiny Polished Steel French Vintage Mini Table / Child’s Desk

Upholstery ideas and inspiration for French antique and vintage beds

Frenchfinds has a constant stream of creative customers with bucketfuls of interesting ideas on how they want a particular antique or vintage piece of furniture finishing.

Upholstery Inspiration

Recently, we have had lots of fantastic antique and vintage French beds reupholstered for clients in a multitude of different ways.

The variety of fabrics that have been chosen shows the wonderful versatility of using fabric as a decorative tool. To give you a peak of our latest projects and provide inspirations for your own projects here are the before and after shots.

1920′s gilded frame French corbeille bed

This was a really nice project to work on as it put the life back into a beautiful but rare bed for Troughton Creations who specialise in a whole range of high level interior and garden design work.

Before

Simple original calico & hessian covering on the foot and headboard. The side rails retained their original embroidered silk finish.

Sublime & bright colours for French antique furniture

Fantastic distressed experiment for French antique Furniture

We tested a new approach with a brilliant Farrow & Ball ‘Raddicio Red’ undercoat on this antique bamboo washstand.

We then gave it a top coat of satin black and distressed it heavily to give a show through.

Set off with the white marble top we’re really pleased with the results – see what you think!

MNEVAMS4KUN3

Dedication to the glamour of buying French antique furniture in the snow!

We’re very privileged to be able to do a job that many people dream of, the glamorous job of travelling across France and buying antique French furniture;

The excitement and warm feeling that you get

from meeting, speaking to and making friends with a wonderful number of French people.

The ability to indulge in a very relaxed country steeped in a wide array of  philosophy, art, culture, food and beautiful

countryside.

It is great, hard work, occasionally gritty but great. But every so often even great and glamorous jobs can test your dedication…

French antique furniture styles guide pt 1

Most of the French antique furniture Frenchfinds supplies are from the late 1800s or early 1900s.  Almost all of these items are made in certain in style harking back to definitive earlier periods of French furniture design.

From the 1830s, starting with Gothic and Rococo revivals, it became more and more popular to reinvent these styles to fit the tastes of the day. As tastes blended and fashions became more mixed up, motifs from eras cross-fertilised the craftmanship changing furniture from true reproductions to interpretations to please clients of the time.

In order to help understand these categories we have put together a quick guide to the antique French furniture styles we sell. Below are the first 3 categories in the series – Rococo, Henri II and Louis XVI.

Provencal, Napolean III, Empire, Louis XV, Louis XIII, Breton and Louis Phillipe styles will be covered in forthcoming posts.

How distressed do you want it? Examples of distressing antique French furniture

Lots of people love the aged, old, battered, shabby chic look on French furniture, something that gives the piece a used feeling to it.

For those antique furniture items that do not already have this with it, either because they are too new or they are too pristine, the look can be created in lots of different ways. The term used for making something look older or more worn, is one I absolutely adore, it is called ‘distressing’. Hence, I often end up asking the intriguing question to a customer, “how distressed would you like your French armoire/buffet/bed?”.

This is not a new phenomenon, items that were old in the late 1800′s were made to look even older by bashing coal into them, smacking them with bags of stone and artistically abusing them with a range of different stains.

Rubbing painted furniture down to give nicks and wear is one of Frenchfinds specialities and something that is very popular. However, distressing antiques and vintage furniture is a really subjective activity. Having distressed many items over the last 8 years and to varying specifications we have come up with what we reckon as a standardised scale of distress!

See below for examples and photos of distressed French furniture…

Antiques sustainable way to have a low carbon footprint

Antiques green alternative to buying new

Antiques are no longer brown, white or any other colour! They’re green!

Buying an antique or vintage piece rather than a new reproduction can save as much as 537kg of carbon dioxide emissions (the equivalent weight of 6 fully grown men).

Antiques 10 times better than new

Figures to indicate how much better for the environment antique & vintage furniture is compared to new furniture has been hard to come by but several articles have popped up recently to highlight this.

Nigel Worboys, a Beaconsfield Antique Dealer quoted in the Antiques Trade Gazette and This is Bristol.co.uk on the launch of a new green initiative says,

“The carbon footprint from antiques’ original production expired a long time ago, and their continued existence has been testament to a life cycle of at least 10 times an equivalent modern item,”

Need your French furniture wish to come true?

Yes, the French furniture fairies are departing to France next week to make more people’s wishes come true. We have a large number of wishes from people for French furniture that we help fulfil.

One joy of French antique furniture is that is unique. The one infuriating thing about French antique furniture is that is unique! It is almost impossible to find an identical piece but we find many pieces that match a particular popular styles.

Frenchfinds is very happy to try and find pieces for whatever you may be craving for, direct from France (if it isn’t already on the Frenchfinds website). We cover some big areas of France with lots of contacts and friends we have built up over the last 15 years of getting to love the country and its beautiful styles.

Let us know the size, style, colour(s), and any other key information and we will do our utmost best to make your wishes come true.

You can contact us direct on 01538 370058 (UK) or frenchfinds@yahoo.co.uk