"Every time Isaac and Mary Bell moved uptown, the ceilings got lower and the arms that support the crown were shortened," curator Peter M. Kenny says of the labeled French bedstead made between 1812 and 1819 that is now at the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum in the Bronx. The Met's conservation staf returned the crown, a rare survivor, to its original height.

 

Honore Lannuier

Cabinetmaker from Paris

By Laura Beach

NEW YORK CITY - Like the craftsman whose name it bears, "Honore Lannuier: Cabinetmaker From Paris" is both lushly flamboyant and rigorously restrained.

This, in large measure, is thanks to Peter M. Kenny, the exuberant curator who has perfectly encapsulated the paradox in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through June 14.

The emigre ebeniste who revolutionized New York taste from 1803 until his death in 1819 is best known as the transmitter of a sumptuously gilded, lavishly archaeological French style. But, as Kenny demonstrates, discipline rather than indulgence brought the Gallic perfectionist to fame.

Charles-Honore Lannuier (b. 1779) was zealous in his practice from first to last. Unlike most of his competitors, he left a definitive body of marked work. He was adamant in his choice of woods, exacting in his use of veneers, unerring in his eye for proportion, meticulous in his carving, and scrupulous in his application of finishes and metal mounts.

The same diligence and concision marks Kenny's long awaited research, which surveys Lannuier's contribution in a lively, graceful way. Published by Harry N. Abrams, Honore Lannuier: Cabinetmaker From Paris (softcover $45, clothbound $60) includes two bookend chapters, one by Ulrich Leben and the other by Frances F. Bretter, on the cabinetmaker's formative years abroad and his subsequent American clientele. Kenny's concluding essay on connoisseurship is an indispensable guide to Lannuier technique and style. A 125-entry catalogue describes every documented or firmly attributed piece in full.

Unlike his rival Duncan Phyfe, who loved the limelight, Lannuier seemed content to have kept a low profile. "He remains a French citizen his whole life. He stays at his Broad Street address. He doesn't get a bigger shop. He finds a niche and is comfortable," says Kenny. With no surviving descriptions of the man, no shop records, and only a few bills, the curator formed a composite portrait of the cabinetmaker by studying the nuance of his craft.

Kenny began work on the show shortly after arriving at the Met in 1992. "There was an air of inevitability about the project," he writes. Phyfe, who lingered in the collective social memory, was for decades "the American Chippendale," as domestic as apple pie. Though Lannuier was not fully recognized until the 1960s, it was former American Wing curator Berry B. Tracy who brought him to light.

Kenny inherited a scholarly tradition begun by Ernest F. Hagen (1830-1913), the German-American cabinetmaker who made a career copying Phyfe. Between 1892 and 1906, Hagen collected scraps of information on Lannuier, saving it in a notebook now at the Museum of the City of New York. By 1922, the Met had inadvertently acknowledged Lannuier by including a signed and labeled New York-style gaming table by the Frenchman in "Furniture Masterpieces By Duncan Phyfe." It was a decade before Thomas Hamilton Ormsbee spotted Lannuier's stamp on the edge of the drawer.

Consecutive articles by Ormsbee appeared in The Magazine Antiques in 1933. A year later, Met curator Joseph Downs organized "Loan Exhibition of New York State Furniture." The show united a spectacular pair of gilded, figural card tables - the epitome of late Lannuier style - with the understated "gout moderne" items preferred by Henry du Pont. Downs' unflagging interest in the craftsman, writes Kenny, culminated with the Met's 1946 purchase of a supremely elegant Directoire-style card table from Lannuier's early period, 1805-12.

In the late 1960s, under Tracy's eminent direction, the museum acquired its first examples of gilded, figural Lannuier furniture. After the death of the man who for 17 years served as curator of the American Wing, the Met secured his papers. "The Tracy Archives have been invaluable in enabling me to write about Lannuier's life and work in the overall context of the New York cabinetmaking trade in the early Nineteenth Century - a wonderfully complex story that has never been told," notes Kenny, who distilled a century's worth of scholarship before embarking on his own.

"I'm not an expert in French furniture, but I know more about it than I did," protests the curator, whose preparation took him to Paris to study sources and influences in Lannuier's design. "What is it, German?," French authorities would ask, mystified by the curious amalgamation of French, English, and New York prototype in the cabinetmaker's product.

This mingling of old and new world influences in goods meant to appeal to a melting-pot clientele is what brands Lannuier furniture as distinctly American. "Lannuier was as subject to forces here as to forces from his past. He imported ideas and craftsmen from France, then ran up against the English Regency," Kenny explains.

Equal parts assimilation and inspiration, the complex story unfolds in four large galleries just off the American Wing's garden court. The spareness of the installation dramatizes the majesty of the material, which barely hides its imperial ambitions.

In the opening gallery, the breadth of Lannuier's oeuvre is revealed in an assortment spanning "le gout moderne," or Directoire style, to "le gout antique," or Consulat and Empire taste. "This early material is as rare as anything. What's interesting is that it was also the first collected," says Kenny, gesturing to an attenuated, marble-top pier table with its restrained decoration limited to burnished brass inlays and lustrous veneers.

A second gallery houses comparative displays of card tables, square pier tables, and beds, three fortes of a designer who evolved a limited line to satisfy the cravings of his clientele. They consumed French furniture the way they consumed French pastry, in small but exceedingly rich portions.

Lannuier's sway is reflected in the New York cabinetmaker' books of prices, which in 1810 and 1817 introduced six new French forms: the French press (armoire), the French bureau (commode), the French sideboard (desserte), French bedstead (lit a travers), the square pier table (console antique), and screen dressing glass (psyche).

"People were not hung up with being completely Empire French, but they liked a few accents. You could do a wall like this," says Kenny, citing Pierre de la Mesangere's design of 1808, showing a square pier table surmounted by a mirror and elaborate curtain treatment. Beds crowned with yards of costly fabric fulfilled a similar need, providing a chic and showy backdrop for intimate entertaining.

Radiating French lux and volupte, the most opulent gallery defines Lannuier's mature antique style, which dates from 1812 to 1819. "It has made me a real snob for just this kind of New York furniture," says Kenny, brushing off suggestions that these extravagant fabrications were way over the top.

Crouching, he explicates the anatomy of a 1817 card table, one of a pair that the Met acquired just the year before last. "Lannuier satisfied a great desire for Classical accuracy, rendered in an elegant way," Kenny says. "Start with the carved paw feet. They extend to leafage, which captures the weight of the form. Lannuier cradles the platform and inserts this figure, all compound curves. She alights and occupies the space. The upper section is approached architecturally, with a frieze, cornice, and molding, a nice architectural finish." Rising, he admires the flickering sequence of gilded finishes, from dull matte to high sheen. The array of card tables and canted-corner pier tables that light the room are Lannuier's signal gift to American design.

Lannuier was hardly the only French cabinetmaker working in New York. In a final gallery, Kenny challenges attentive viewers to compare the master's hand to unmarked, undocumented pieces by his competition, perhaps Joseph Brauwers, J.M. Gicquel, or even Duncan Phyfe. The humbling exercise is a reminder of the subtleties of these complex creations, in which many skilled hands played an as yet indeterminate part.

Though Honore Lannuier is in print, the book on New York cabinetmaking in the late Federal era is far from closed. "I hope I left the door open," says Kenny, who continues to sift through evidence and hope for the letter, bill, signature, or label that will clarify all. After a century of exploration, such a discovery seems unlikely. But who knows? Already Kenny has provided a provocative sequel, presenting new findings in the May issue of The Magazine Antiques.

The curator will give a gallery talk on May 27 at 11 am. Lectures by Marvin Schwartz are planned for June 5 at 11 am and June 9 at 3 pm.

At Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is open Fridays and Saturdays, 9:30 am to 9 pm; and Sundays, and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 am to 5:15 pm. Telephone 212/535-7710.