Empire style

also: Style Empire

style c. 1800-1815 France Europe

The Empire style is the official neoclassicism of Napoleonic France, developed around 1800 and named for the Empire proclaimed in 1804. The architects-decorators Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léon Fontaine codified it in pattern books whose designs traveled across Europe, giving the style a currency from Stockholm to St Petersburg. It drew on Greco-Roman and Egyptian forms - the latter revived after Napoleon's Egyptian campaign - and bent them to imperial propaganda: bees, eagles, laurel wreaths and swans recur as carved and gilded emblems. Furniture is rectilinear and monumental, sheathed in dark mahogany with richly cast gilt-bronze (ormolu) mounts, while interiors pair crimson silks with marble, bronze and classical columns. The result is one of the most recognizable decorative ensembles in European design.

Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Empire style".
Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Empire style".Public domain (credit: Guillaume Abel Blouet / Jean-Nicolas Huyot / Louis-Robert Go) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Dark mahogany veneers with finely cast gilt-bronze (ormolu) mounts and fittings
  • Greco-Roman and Egyptian motifs: eagles, bees, swans, sphinxes, laurel wreaths
  • Rectilinear, columnar furniture forms with clean profiles and marble tops
  • Symmetrical, stage-like interiors in crimson, gold and cream
  • Emblematic ornament repeated with heraldic discipline (Napoleonic symbols)

Key figures

  • Charles Percier (1764-1838) — Architect-decorator who co-codified the style in published pattern books
  • Pierre-François-Léon Fontaine (1762-1853) — Percier's partner, architect to Napoleon and theorist of the style

Example works

  • Recueil de décorations intérieures — Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léon Fontaine (1801)
  • Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel — Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léon Fontaine (1806-1808)

Sources

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