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Drawing Room

During the eighteenth century, furnishings became increasingly refined and elegant. The furniture in the Drawing Room at Bayou Bend demonstrates a new obsession with the S-curve.

No furniture form better epitomizes the development of eighteenth-century style than the chair. As the century progressed, the William and Mary style gave way to the graceful curves of late Baroque, or Queen Anne style.

Drawing Room
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Post or turned legs were replaced by graceful cabriole legs, with their outwardly curved knees and inwardly curved ankles. The late Baroque style dominated American furniture from 1725 until 1760, when the more extravagant forms of Rococo style came into vogue.

The French-influenced Rococo style epitomized the lavish lifestyle to which middle-class Americans aspired. One of its major proponents was the English furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, whose 1754 pattern book was an important reference for American furniture makers.

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