Armchair

Léon Marcotte

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This armchair is part of a suite of Louis XVI–style furniture that John Taylor Johnston (1820–1893) purchased from the firm of Ringuet-Leprince and L. Marcotte in about 1856. This international firm had showrooms in both Paris and New York, and it is believed that at least some of the pieces of the suite were made in Paris for the New York commission. Johnston, a railroad executive and the first president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, used the furniture in the music room of his residence at 8 Fifth Avenue. The suite (68.69.1–68.69.11, 68.165.1–68.165.6) includes two sofas, two armchairs, a table, two matching cabinets, a third large cabinet, six matching side chairs, a pair of lyre-back side chairs, and a firescreen. After Ringuet-Leprince retired in 1860, the firm became known as L. Marcotte and Company. Léon Marcotte was New York's most noted cabinetmaker and interior decorator during the 1860s.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art