Etagère; Maison Alphonse Giroux, France, c. 1860.

MAISON ALPHONSE GIROUX ( act. 1799-1867).
Etagère; c. 1860.
Chiseled and burnished bronze with engraved glass plates.
Work reproduced in C. Payne, Paris Furniture: the luxury market of the 19th century, Éditions Monelle Hayot, 2018, p. 77 (illustrated).
Signed Aph Giroux Paris.
Measurements: 89.5 x 48 x 48 cm.
Etagère made of gilded bronze and Japanese-style glass in its design. Japanese products became increasingly familiar in Paris thanks to a large exhibition in the Japanese pavilion at the Universal Exhibition of 1867 and later in Vienna in 1873. The Parisian firms Christofle and Barbedienne were the main exponents of the new fashion for Japonisme. It was applied mainly to metal furniture with little or no woodwork. In the Western decorative arts and mixed motifs and Japanese in the same object, which can often make it difficult, if not impossible, to define precisely whether the object should be described as chinoiserie or Japonisme. A magazine called Art Amateur in New York was one of the first to use the word "japanesque" as an appropriate response to Giroux's cabinet. Two designer makers and early advocates of an oriental style in Paris were Giroux and Duvinage. The former sold his store to Ferdinand Duvinage and his partner Harinckouk in 1867. Giroux mainly adapted Chinese art; his publication Meubles et fantaisies, circa 1840, shows tables in this new fashionable idiom and is reminiscent of the papier-mâché furniture of the same period.