Fall front secretary desk
This fall front secretary desk is attributed to the French-born and trained cabinetmaker Michel Bouvier (1792-1874) who emigrated to Philadelphia after the collapse of the Empire in 1815. By 1819 he had established himself as a cabinetmaker, and in 1825 he was operating a "cabinet & sofa warehouse" on South Second Street, where he remained for more than thirty years. According to family tradition, Bouvier supplied this desk for Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844) while superintending the building and furnishing of Bonaparte's home, "Point Breeze" near Bordentown, NJ on the Delaware River. It is believed that the desk later passed to Garret Dorset Wall (1783-1850), a New Jersey lawyer who handled Bonaparte's legal affairs. The desk descended to Wall's daughter, Maria Matilda (b. 1815), the wife of New Jersey Governor Peter Dumont Vroom (1791-1874), and it remained in the Vroom family until presented to the Athenaeum in 1961.
Bouvier, Michel
1818 - 1820
1961.03.01
Armchair
This handsome chair descended through the family of its maker, French émigré cabinetmaker Michel Bouvier (1792-1874). The chair is unusual for its slip-in upholstered scrolled back and scrolled arms which terminate in carved eagle heads. The arms have the horizontal forward thrust of earlier French models and show the slight curve which was then coming into vogue. The legs mark the reintroduction of the cabriole form. The chair was restored and reupholstered in black horsehair--a popular upholstery material in the nineteenth century--as suggested by surviving fragments discovered under later upholstery.
Michel Bouvier (Attributed)
1835(circa)
1983.03.01