Napoleon III Silk Chaise Lounge

Found outside Lyon from a château, this Napoleon III silk chaise was built for the idle hours, not quite a chair and not quite a bed. It comes from France's Second Empire, the 1850s and 60s, when the country was rich and showy and its rooms filled with deep, soft, fully upholstered seating of a kind that had barely existed a generation before. The coil spring was new to furniture then, and it let the upholsterer bury the whole wooden frame under padding and silk and finish the bottom with a skirt of fringe, so a piece like this looks less built than poured. In a Second Empire bedroom it would have sat by the window of a lady's room, where she reclined through the afternoon to read, rest, or receive a visitor without ever standing up. Sylvie puts it in a bedroom by a window, the spot for a book and a long afternoon.

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