Louis XVI-Style Medallion Chair in Limed Oak Finish with Radial Cane Back and Linen Seat

About this object

A medallion-back chair in the Louis XVI manner — the oval-backed form Paris perfected in the 1770s — built in solid hardwood and finished by liming, the old technique of working white pigment into open grain so every pore of the timber reads as a fine pale line. The oval frame holds the chair's signature: a cane back woven not in the usual flat octagonal mesh but in concentric radial rings spiralling out from a central wood boss, so the panel reads like a woven sunburst. Below, a generous seat in natural linen sits on stop-fluted, tapering legs with carved rosette blocks at each corner — the full neoclassical kit, rendered in a palette of bone, wheat and greige. The cane work is the passage to study, because it is double labour. Behind the decorative face sits a conventionally woven cane panel for strength; over it, the radial pattern is built ring by ring, each circuit of weaving slightly wider than the last, every strand tensioned against a curve rather than a straight rail — substantially harder than flat caning, which is why you rarely see it. The liming is equally deliberate: the timber is wire-brushed to open the grain before the white is rubbed in and the surplus rubbed off, a finish that cannot be sprayed on and shows its hand-work at arm's length. This is the chair the modern French-country and "quiet luxury" interior is built around — and it earns its keep hardest as a dining set, where six or eight radial-cane medallions in a row turn the backs of the chairs into the room's pattern. Singly, it works at a desk, a dressing table, or beside a bed. The limed finish and linen keep it cool and casual against terracotta, jute and whitewash; the Louis XVI bones keep it serious enough for a formal table. Few chairs travel between those two worlds this comfortably.