Honoré Lannuier, cabinet maker from Paris

Although his brief but productive career as a cabinetmaker in New York lasted a mere sixteen years, the French-born maitre ebeniste Charles-Honore Lannuier (1779-1819) was a leading figure in the development of a distinctive and highly refined style of furniture in the Late Federal period. A contemporary of the renowned master Duncan Phyfe, Lannuier, like him, made fashionable gilded card tables, marble-topped pier tables, bedsteads, and seating furniture for wealthy clients numbering among the mercantile and social elite of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Savannah. This volume, which complements the exhibition "Honore Lannuier, Parisian Cabinetmaker in Federal New York" held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in spring 1998, represents the most complete study of Lannuier's life and work published to date.