Robin Miller
18th Century French Royal Furniture
Summary
An intimate survey of exquisite French furniture from the 18th century, showcasing pieces made for French royalty, including Louis XV and Louis XVI, that also follows the transition of styles from opulent Baroque to curvaceous Rococo and finally to the restrained elegance of Neoclassical.
Robin Miller
Robin Miller is a dealer and consultant in fine antique furniture and decorative arts since 1989. In the 1980s, she attended Christie’s Fine Arts course where Patrick Bade was one of her tutors. She went on to work at Sotheby’s in New York. Robin also managed her family’s architectural woodworking company, William Somerville, Inc., and antique furniture restoration company, D. Miller Restorers, Inc., until early 2020. She was an adjunct lecturer at both Parson’s School of Design and NYU School of Business and Professional Studies and has guest lectured at Christie’s Education.
To become a cabinetmaker, it was years and years of arduous work, and you learnt it on the job. The only way you usually got in was to be the son of a cabinetmaker, or to come from that family.
In America it was very popular amongst Washington and Jefferson and the diplomats, and so a lot of it really came and was exported through the diplomatic trade. But then when you had the sales in the 1790s in Paris to sell off the royal furniture, that’s really when it left for England and the United States.