Jean-Joseph Chapuis

Jean-Joseph Chapuis (1765-1864) was a French cabinetmaker of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Biography

Jean-Joseph Chapuis was born in Brussels in 1765. It was formed in Paris where he acquired workmanship, what allowed him to use a stamp. It had installed its workshop in its home town by 1795 and kept it active to 1830, applying regularly, one or several times, on the pieces of furniture of its manufacture, its stamp. When the first works on the history of the French furniture in 18th century appeared in Paris, this one was allocated in homonymous one Claude, who was in fact only a simple trader, of whom they ignore everything, but who deprived it of his fame. This neglected existence explains that rare are the pieces of furniture of Jean-Joseph Chapuis, which exist in public collections abroad, like in Belgium, and still its - the museum of Vleeshuis in separate part of Antwerp - only insulated rooms which prevent from returning a precise count of the numerous aspects of its production. Alone the museum of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode (Brussels) allows to make contact with several stamped pieces of furniture Chapuis all gathered by the same keen amateur of empire, Joseph Adolph Van Cutsem who, in 1865, supplemented his collection besides by two important purchases during the funeral sale of Jean Joseph Chapuis. But, this group does not reflect all facets of the production of the cabinetmaker.

Creative work

As for the Royal Museums of Art and History, for a long time they had, too, only the single copy of stamped piece of furniture, a chair of wardrobe entered in their collections following important inheritance makes to the Belgian State by Isabel and Helen Gottschalk in 1915, inheritance consisting of a very nice china collection of Tournai, silver, watches, clocks and instruments of mathematics as well as some pieces of furniture of secondary interest and mentioned above Chapuis. Au 18th century, as nowadays, they indicated this type of piece of furniture either under the name of «chair» of convenience ", or under that of «chair» of wealth or else of «business chair». These are always pieces of furniture of joinery rather than cabinetmaking.

Nevertheless in 1805, during the expertise of the pieces of furniture of the royal castle of Laeken with which it had been loaded, Chapuis uses another term still, that of «chair of wardrobe», term which they also raise in 1815, in Inventory after decease of the empress Josephine in Malmaison. In both cases, it's about princely residences which implicate the existence of a wardrobe, annex of the bedroom where can appear pieces of furniture of taking. As they will see it below its in the category «chair of wardrobe» that the piece of furniture of inheritance Gottschalk forms a line.

The piece of furniture being discussed in plated mahogany tree is made up of two stacked bodies, unequal depth, in carrying lateral handles: the less deep, upper body, is in the form of cupboard the leaf of which is replaced with a curtain of " lattés unstable " vertical, in mahogany tree, having glued together on a grey cloth and sliding horizontally by winding towards right. The lower body is made of a mobile party which comes, with the aid of a big ring of gold copper crossed in the face of a lion forward, sliding in a fixed frame adorned with two commanded scabbards of suckle female bronzy skated. Let us point out that on their foundation see each other no bare feet and this absence also attracts attention on beds and night tables taken out from the workshop of Chapuis in this epoch. On both sides of the curtain of laths, they note smart inlaying of ebony and citrus representing an arch to the slack rope crossed by one arrow. According to his usage in this period of its production. Chapuis puts down on the field of the upper tray, as on that of slaughtering it, a narrow inlaying of blackened wood encircled with fine nets of copper. The inflexibility of the piece of furniture and its decoration, that they are made general, as scabbards with faces, or clean in Chapuis, as inlaying with nets of copper or others, allows to fix the date: Consulate or at the beginning of Empire (1799–1810). The care of its execution encourages therefore lining it up in the category of «chair of wardrobe».

The most prosperous period of the workshop of Jean-Joseph Chapuis, the one during whom it went to the point of using «twenty workers and more», to take back the expression of licenses, is under French regime: also it is the production of this epoch which they find most often on walk you. It's to her therefore that belong three acquisitions of the Museum.^[1]

References