Album containing 149 Furniture Designs
Design House Maison Leys
Associated with Georges Hoentschel French
Not on view
This nineteenth-century album consists of 31 pages with a total of 149 drawings furniture designs from the decorating firm Maison Leys, Paris. A variety of different types of furniture is represented, ranging from chairs, side boards and tables to mirrors, fire screens and coat racks in various historic styles. Most of them appear to be in the neo-Renaissance style that was particularly popular during the 1860s and 1870s. The variation in rendering techniques and functions of the drawings suggest that the album is almost certainly a scrapbook that was compiled at a later date and was not used as a catalog for clients or as a model book in the workshop. Some annotations on the drawings show that several of the individual drawings were used in this manner, but in most cases much of this kind of information has been cut off, suggesting that it was no longer of use to the owner of the album.
