Antique 18th Century Italian Irwin and Lane Armchairs- a Pair

An Italian furniture scholar tells us that this sensual pair of 18th-century Louis XV fauteuils (armchairs with upholstered arms and open sides) was likely made in the Marches, a region on Italy’s eastern coast, each featuring polished wood surfaces with gilded-gesso decorations. Regal and elegant, they offer sloping profiles, cabriole legs, and distinctive details, including fluted arms, medallions, foliate ornamentation, and reverse C-shape ornaments that join the arms to the backrests. A similar chair form, this one identified as from the Piedmont region in Italy’s northwest, appears in Volume Two of “A History of Italian Furniture, from the Fourteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries” (Doubleday, 1918), a limited-edition magnum opus that was researched and written by William M. Odom (1884-1942), art critic, historian, the second president of the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (later Parsons School of Design) in New York City and Paris, an aficionado of Italian furniture, and a Southerner who was himself half-Italian. Original editions of that book are hard to come by, so keep an eye out for the second edition, which was published in 1967.