BY JEAN AVISSE, CIRCA 1750

Jean Avisse, maître in 1745.

Related to the Gourdin family, a dynasty of renowned carpenters, Jean Avisse was born in 1723. He became master in 1745 and moved to rue de Cléry in Paris in 1747. He initially supplied a select group of tapestry makers and marchands-merciers including Blin, Bouguereau, Lacoursière, Jalouret, the Lrin Family and Pousse, before beginning to work exclusively for notable private clients such as the Marquise de Chabannes, the Comtesse de Fontenay and the Chevalier de Lamotte.

As seen on these bergères, Avisse's work is characterized by ample forms and subtly curved legs, demonstrating an outstanding sense of design and proportion to produce some of the finest Rococo seat furniture of the eighteenth century. Because sculpture was carried out by seat sculptors—a separate guild from menuisiers—Jean Avisse shrewdly surrounded himself with highly skilled woodcarvers such as Jean-François Baillard, Claude Vinache and Pierre Rousseau. Bill G. B. Pallot, in his monograph L'Art du siège au XVIIIe siège en France, Paris, 1987, p. 300, points out that, like Michel Avisse, Jean delegated the carving of his chairs to the talented Nicolas Heurtaut, who distinguished himself by producing "the most abundantly carved works [which] are always masterpieces of execution, with very detailed carving and unusual motifs.” The generous proportions of these bergères, the subtle serpentine line of the frames and restrained floral carving also appear on an unstamped example illustrated in M. Jarry, Le Siège Français, Fribourg, 1973, fig. 112.