Design for a Chair Seat Cover with a Classical-Inspired Vase with Two Handles, Two Exotic Birds and Two Half-Human Grotesque Figures Inside an Ornamental Frame with Two Cornucopias Holding Bundles of Leaves and Fruits and Decorated Scrolls of Leaves and Flowers

Designer Anonymous, French, 19th century French

Not on view

Rectangular sheet of paper with a design for a chair seat cover from the second half of the nineteenth century that forms part of the Classical and Renaissance Revival that took place during this period, where the interest in the art and architecture from Ancient Rome and the 15th and 16th centuries, propelled by archaeological discoveries in Greece, Italy and Egypt that took place from about 1850. Classical and Renaissance pieces were reinterpreted in a variety of forms and motifs, and classical figures, scrolling decorations, strapwork, and the inclusion of grotesques and moresques, became a central part of the designs produced during this nineteenth-century Revival.
This design is made up of a Classical-style vase rendered with shades of yellow to imitate a golden finish, with a horizontal decoration colored with two shades of blue and two scrolling handles colored with the lighter shade of blue, within an ornamental frame, also simulating a golden finish. The frame is composed of scrolls and two cornucopias that emerge from the vase and form the bottom half of the frame, which hold leaves and fruits, possibly apples or apricots, from which scrolling leaves and vegetal motifs stem out to decorate the upper half ornamental frame. The leaves are all colored with green, the fruits with shades of orange, and the scrolling leaves and flowers with green, carmine, pink and blue. Two exotic birds with brown, orange and gree feathers stand above the handles of the vase, and two half-human grotesque figures, rendered with brownish-gray color to simulate possibly a copper finish, stand over the cornucopias, with one hand holding the handles of the vase and the other the tails of the birds. A pink textile hangs scrolling around the cornucopias at the bottom of the frame. The background of the design is of green color inside a gray frame.
The design is placed on the same paper as a similar chair back cover (49.50.197(a)), possibly meant to be part of the same chair as this.

Design for a Chair Seat Cover with a Classical-Inspired Vase with Two Handles, Two Exotic Birds and Two Half-Human Grotesque Figures Inside an Ornamental Frame with Two Cornucopias Holding Bundles of Leaves and Fruits and Decorated Scrolls of Leaves and Flowers, Anonymous, French, 19th century, Watercolor and Gouache

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