A Chrome and Black Leather Curule Armchair in The Manner of Maison Jansen
A Chrome and Black Leather Curule Armchair in The Manner of Maison Jansen
The chair of ancient Roman curule form, the X-shaped base composed of sweeping chrome-plated steel legs of substantial section, each arc terminating in arched feet and united at the crossing by a cast rosette medallion of classical inspiration. The upper structure continuing in polished chrome, the uprights rising to support a rectangular back panel of thick black saddle leather, suspended and secured to the frame by looped leather straps — a detail at once archaic and rigorously modern. The seat similarly formed as a slung leather panel, tautly fitted and buttoned at intervals; the open armrests described by gently curving leather straps between chrome uprights, each terminal surmounted by a turned chrome finial of reductive, bullet-like form.
The curule, or sella curulis, was the seat of Roman magistrates and generals, and its revival as a prestige furnishing form has a long history in European decorative arts, from the Empire period through to the great Parisian maisons of the twentieth century.
Maison Jansen — the storied firm whose clients ranged from the Duchess of Windsor to the Shah of Iran — produced curule seating of precisely this character during the 1960s and 1970s, combining the authority of antiquity with the glamour of polished chrome and fine leather.
French, circa 1960s
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