Mrs. Vanderbilt's Room

Mrs. Vanderbilt's suite of rooms are decorated in the Louis XV style, with references to some of the finest rooms created in eighteenth-century France. The railing around the bed is borrowed from an architectural convention typically found in royal bed chambers. For the architecture of the room, Codman relied on eighteenth-century archictural platebooks by Jacques-François Blondel and Alexandre Eugene Prignot. The influential British art dealer, Joseph Duveen, procured the fifteen painted vignettes—copies after Charles-Joseph Natoire and Francois Boucher. The room is filled with numerous examples of furniture from the workshop of French ébéniste Paul Sormani.

 

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Furnishings of Note

 

Commode

The curvaceous shape (bombé) of this magnificent commode in the Louis XV style was made by French furniture maker Paul Sormani about 1875. The floral inlay and marquetry, and the gilt bronze mounts are indicative of Sormani's ability to create a impressive furniture in the style of the furniture made for French royalty.