Antoine Chenevière - Russian Furniture - The Golden Age 1780–1840

Chenevière, Antoine: Russian Furniture. The Golden Age 1780-1840
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988
ISBN 0-297-79441-8

Comprehensive monograph on Russian furniture art between 1780 and 1840, the first complete presentation of the subject in English.
Antoine Chenevière examines the stylistic upswing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, beginning with the cultural flourishing that began under Catherine II and the emergence of an independent Russian formal language. The presentation is chronological and deals with both the relevant stylistic trends and the organisation of furniture production in guilds and court workshops for each epoch.

Manufacturing techniques such as marquetry, carving and gilding techniques, painted surfaces, the characteristic verre églomisé as well as the steel and stone furniture developed in Russia are discussed in detail.
Biographies and descriptions of the work of outstanding ebenists and architects such as David Roentgen, Heinrich Gambs, Christian Meyer and Andrei Voronikhin form a focal point. The influences of Western artists - such as Charles Cameron and Carlo Rossi - on Russian interior design are also analysed.

Two appendices offer brief biographies of all the well-known furniture artists of the period as well as a contemporary description of the Pavlovsk Palace by Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna (1795). The volume is illustrated with around 335 colour and black-and-white photographs from Russian and Western collections, some published for the first time, supplemented by contemporary watercolours, technical drawings and detailed photographs, and represents a standard work for the study of Russian furniture art.

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