FOLIOT, Nicolas-Quinibert

(b. 1706 Paris, d. 1776 Paris)

French chairmaker. For 40 years he ran a family workshop in Paris, supplying huge numbers of chairs (in one year 468 chairs and 135 armchairs) to the court. He eventually became the royal furniture-maker (menuisier du garde-meuble du roi), and was the creator of the Louis XVI style of chairs. As furniture for the crown was not marked, there are sometimes difficulties of attribution, but at least one set of chairs at Versailles is known to have come from his workshop, and the Musée du Louvre has at least two of his chairs.

Armchair (Bergère a la reine et a châssis, assise cannée)

Born into a family of chairmakers and furniture carvers, Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot distinguished himself as a skilled menuisier running a prosperous workshop for forty years in Paris in the 1700s. For much of his career, he worked for the French court, sending furniture to the palaces of Versailles, Compi�gne, and Fontainebleau. This earned him the title of menuisier du Garde-Meuble du Roi (Furniture-Maker to the King’s Household).

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Folding stool

Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot, from a highly professional family, executed Louis XV’s elegant and finely carved bedchamber. In a single year, Foliot’s workshop was able to provide sixty beds, one hundred and thirty-five armchairs, four hundred sixty eight chairs.

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