[Rarebooks] FS: Important 1812 French Empire Design Portfolio

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

Percier, Charles & P.F.L. Fontaine. "Recueil de Decorations Interieures,
comprenant tout ce qui a Rapport a l’Ameublement..."  Paris; 1812.

Percier and Fontaine were a talented team of Empire/Neo-Classic designers
who helped Napoleon redecorate many of his residences and public buildings
in the new Empire styles and also provided the designs and models for the
French Empire style in furniture and interior décor, as illustrated here.
They met as students at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts and worked together
in Rome at the French Academy. Lincoln Kirstein has much to say about them
and their somewhat complicated relationship with Napoleon in the excellent
catalog "The Taste of Napoleon" (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art,
1969) from which we take the liberty of quoting liberally-

    "As architects and designers, Percier and Fontaine contributed greatly
to the panoply of elegance with which Napoleon surrounded himself.
They were the architects for the Empress Josephine for the remodeling
of Malmaison, they were the architects of the Louvre and of the
Tuileries... they worked at Saint-Cloud, the Trianon, Compiegne, and
Fountainebleau... Percier, supremely disciplined by measuring ancient
Roman monuments fused the various strands into a contemporary Parisian
antiquarianism...restored to a fresh wholeness, scaled down to modern
metropolitan needs, primed for production and use. Elements in the
vocabulary -eagles, sphinxes, victories, wreaths, fasces, columns,
trophies, insignia -were worked and reworked, but Percier's
delineation, his exquisite sense of proportion and fitness, his
suggestion of the subtle plasticity of chiseled low-relief, made it
seem like a novel metric to hymn Napoleon's epic."

But it was not all quite that easy. Relations between the Emperor and his
designers could be strained-

    "(Napoleon) was unpardonably rude to Charles Percier, a sickly mouse
of a man, angelic character, marvelous draftsman, since he was too shy
and busy to set himself constantly in the Emperor's entourage and play
an assiduous courtier. Whereupon, Napoleon pretended he didn't exist. 
Fortunately his devoted comrade Fontaine, a bold, hard-shelled,
skillful administrator protected Percier to do his best work, secluded
in an almost secret studio, between floors in the Louvre. ... It is
likely Napoleon was aware of Percier's part in his partnership with
Fontaine; only he hadn't the patience to placate shyness; it saved
time to talk to one strong foreman rather than a committee of two...
Fontaine's great service lay in knowing how far he could risk
Percier's freedom...  Official recognition of the true genius of the
partnership came late.  It was not easy to work for Bonaparte. ... The
team of Percier and Fontaine, in the capacities of supreme designer,
agile diplomat, expediter, and shop-manager, learned how to
accommodate Josephine's whim to Napoleon's will. It was she who had
Percier's name written in on letters-patent naming Fontaine Architect
of the Palace. How could two such loving comrades be separated? This
was as much taste as sentiment...".

This oversized volume features grandly decorated cabinets, chairs, sofas
and other furniture, as well as wall panels and decorations, and silver
candelabra and dishes, and all sorts of other decorations. A frenzied,
meticulously detailed explosion of Empirical Neo-Classicism.

Hardcover. 11.5”x16.5”, 43 pages of text with an engraved vignette, plus
72 engraved plates; bound in old vellum-covered boards with a leather
spine label; boards somewhat worn, scuffed and soiled. Contents with some
light soil and light variable foxing; not a pristine copy, but still a
nice one.  [08280]  $2,500.00

Some images-
<http://www.joslinhall.com/images08/th-08280.jpg>

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