Curule stool with armrests

Gilded wood richly carved with scrolls, shells and acanthus leaves

Red damask trim in perfect condition

Louis XV style

About 1890
The Second Empire was a period that sought to reconcile progress and innovation with tradition and historicism: it was the intersection between a desire to move towards a promising future and a persistent feeling of connection to the past.

The eclecticism of the Second Empire, the blending of past traditions with the development of modernism, will be called "a style without style." Indeed, the Napoleon III "style" is rather the combination of different past styles adapted to the modern era to correspond to a time of dynamic, innovative transformation.

This phenomenon is characteristic of the "crisis of modernism" embodied by the Romanticism movement of the XIXth century.