A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 374)

the refined, very slim cabriole leg tables are first made. Fabricated from walnut, cherry, or mahogany with cypress secondary wood, these tables functioned as tea, dressing, side, and writing tables. The table (page 378) has legs and sides of cherry, with mahogany employed for the façade and top. As with most of these surviving with original tops, the thin top with its moulded edges is fashioned from two lap-joined boards to minimize warping. CHAIRS Slat-back chairs have been a primary common seating form since the late seventeenth century in Europe and North America. Creole and Acadian slat-back chairs differ in a number of ways from those made in French Canada and from those of the east coast fashioned by the British, Dutch, and German colonists. The Creole form of this chair evolved in the third quarter of the eighteenth century modeled on French provincial chairs, which feature broad, low seats and rear stiles having a pronounced splay. The turnings on the Creole chairs are much more dramatic. Louisiana Creole slat-back chairs fall into five regional groups that date roughly from 1780 to 1830. The regions are Natchitoches, New Orleans, River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge including Bayou LaFourche, New Roads, and the Acadian Prairie. Stylistic differences in the turnings of stiles, types of rear stile finials (acorn, nipple, or ball), types of back splats (arched, with spurs, etc.) and leg variations on a turnip-shape, taper, or flattened balls help distinguish each group. The open armchair (page 380) exhibits all the hallmarks of the New Orleans slat-back chair. The upper rear stiles are boldly turned with a sausage-shaped medial element flanked by cylindrical components, which are separated from each other by turned bead and reel decoration. The three graduated back-slats are arched and bowed and crowned with a pair of spurs per slat. The front stiles each have large sausage turned arm supports with graduated cylinders and bead and reel below. Even the double box stretchers are decoratively turned on all but the back side. The arms are carved in a restrained os de mouton (jawbone of a sheep) shape. While the front legs terminate in a stylized turnip-shape, the finials on the rear can be described either as an inverted turnip or nipple-shape. Perhaps unique, or at least not seen on any style, the table probably dates to the 1750s or 1760s, some twenty or thirty years removed from the style’s period of popularity in France. Near the end of the eighteenth century, at the time when the full-blown rococo style Louisiana-made Creole armoire emerge, 374 CREOLE AND ACADIAN TRADITIONS OF EARLY LOUISIANA FURNITURE Creole-Styled Inlaid Armoire, ca. 1810-1830 Mahogany and birdseye maple with Spanish cedar and white pine; tiger maple veneer; 87 x 53 x 22 in. LSU Museum of Art Gift of the Friends of the Museum and D. Benjamin Kleinpeter Photograph by Jim Zietz, courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection 

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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