Even richer decoration is found on the French furniture of the 1500s that reflected Renaissance influence. The courts of Francis I and his son Henry II employed Italian artists who brought the Renaissance to France. During the reign of Henry II, designs by the architect Jacques du Cerceau were adapted for furniture. His complex juxtapositions of classical motifs were used for decorating carved furniture panels in the new Renaissance taste. The cabinetmaker Hugues Sambin, a major figure, published an influential folio of designs that featured works richly carved in ingenious designs. Distinctive examples reveal a profound understanding of the new classicism.
The impetus of the designers working in the 16th century carried the style into the 17th century. Characteristic tables with thin columnar legs and chairs with paneled backs, first made in the 1560s and 1570s, continued to be made after 1600. In the first decades of the 17th century, changes in design became subtle. During the reign of Louis XIII, from 1610 to 1643, furniture forms followed 16th-century models, but with greater delicacy and with an increased use of rare ebony and rich tortoiseshell veneers instead of carving.
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