French Louis XV Style Stool

Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, this French Louis XV style stool has the unmistakable signature of the period in its frame - four cabriole legs scrolling outward at the foot, joined by a serpentine X-stretcher with a small carved cartouche at the centre where the curves meet. The Louis XV taste lived for the curve; nothing in this style ever runs in a straight line if it could move instead, and the stretcher of a stool was as much about how the eye travelled across it as how the legs stayed put. The seat is upholstered in a deep rust quilted velvet, finished with a row of brass nailheads, the wood beneath worn to a soft walnut from generations of polish. Sylvie sets it at the foot of a bed for the things that come off at the end of the day, or pulls it up to a dressing table as the kind of small seat you stay on longer than you meant to.