Featured Room of the Month - The Library
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The library is primarily filled by the influence of France and Napoleon Bonaparte, particularly in the furniture. The secretary/bookcase, the card table, the drop-leaf table and the sofa are all fine examples of the American version of the Empire style, named after Napoleon's empire. The legs of these pieces are adorned in animal feet and claws. |
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The Pleyel piano is one of only 1000 imported, unassembled, from France between 1820 and 1860. This one was assembled at 252 Royal Street, New Orleans, by J. A. Perier. Above the piano is the print, Racing Cracks, featuring an English horse race which depicts one of the favorite pastimes of successful Louisiana planters. |
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The oil-tinted photograph in the corner of the room near the piano is of Robert Hynson, the second owner of Kent Plantation House. The large, oval shaped portrait above the sofa features French Marshall Prince de Bouveway. It is one of Joseph Boze's works, a successful French artist whose honored paintings hang in the Louvre. The clock on the mantle belonged to the LaCour family. It is a wooden-geared Vies that was manufactured in Bristol, Connecticut in 1835. To either side are two Arguend,
whale-oil-burning lamps. They are named after the Swiss chemist who invented them. The oil
bases are cast in bronze in the shape of boars' heads. |
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Several
chairs in the room are upholstered in a blend of horsehair and brown
cotton. A sample of this is located on the drop-leaf table next to an
authentic newspaper account of George Washington's 1799 obituary.
The gentlemen's fireside chair, covered in black horsehair, is a rare surviving Louisiana piece. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States who negotiated with Napoleon the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, was presented with a similar pair of these chairs. A French map located on the wall to the right of the Secretary shows the vast expanse of land which made up the Louisiana Purchase. On a larger scale it also outlines the established boundaries of the entire continent of North America by 1825. |
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