Provincial – Antiques

Achieving the authentic feel of a period-styled room is usually accomplished by staging the right period furniture. With authentic or reproduction pieces your room can be transformed to a French cottage or a luxurious French chateau.

Upholstery is usually the easiest ways of creating the mood in the room, and does push the envelope from a decorated room to a professionally designed room.

French sofas are generally something you can find easily since many reproductions were made in the 1960’s. There are so many designs, so pick one you absolutely love.

French provincial sofas from the 1960’s often featured satin fabrics, and a mix of baroque fabric, which are generally out of date, which means you will have to factor in upholstery costs.

Your fabric alone can make your room signal an antique feel, or formal style, or relaxed family home, so your fabric consideration is very important when you want to make a statement.

When considering fabric, limit your selections to upholstery fabric than curtain fabrics and so forth. Upholstering a chair or a couch alone can be a large job all on its own if you are doing it by yourself, and can be pretty costly, so be sure to pick a fabric that lasts long, and wears slowly over time.

Natural fabrics are the way to go. Velvets, and heavier fabrics will age well with the slight coffee spills over time.

French Settees can be the easiest to upholster because often they have a back and a seat and no complications compared to the modern sofas.

Some of the prettiest settees are found with the cane backs which can be left alone, or sprayed gold, or painted white or cream and antiqued with brown glaze.

A settee is a couch that is a double or triple seater bench with a wooden back and wooden arms. Along with sofas, accent chairs are often underestimated, but can do wonders in creating a well designed room.

 

19th Century French Louis XV Style Sofa

French Settee From JED

Vivacious French Settee in Burnt Orange Silk

Platinum Blue Lyonne Chest of Drawers Side From Chintz & Company

One look at Chintz & Company’s furniture and you will be surprised at what you find.  Their furniture line features the best reproductions of desirable antiques which takes the most avid shoppers hard to find.

Their stores also have a selection of  unique high-quality home furnishings which include tableware selections, home accessories, linens, florals, and patio furniture.  Granted even Winners, Ross Dress for Less, and Home Goods carry fantastic home decor items, but they don’t carry french reproductions such as Bombe chests, Balloon chairs and Louis XVI Chairs.

Chintz features one thing you cannot find at your local furniture gallery even here in the US, which are their hand picked selection of great repro furniture, which they shop the entire world to find.

They have classic English traditional looks, along side french styles, and a mixture of modern furnishings.  What I found most impressive about their collection when I stumbled across their site, was their Directoire furniture which is only being produced by a very small few companies.

Their classic furniture can be compared to Restoration Hardware’s but with a nicer selection.  Virtually everything is beautiful in their store, it is hard to pick just a handful of furniture to feature in this post because so many pieces are outstanding, so we just featured some of their french selections.  They have 4 main locations in western Canada: Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria and Vancouver.

Directoir Chest From Chintz & Company

French Black Solid Mahogany Buffet Chest From Chintz & Company

Annabelle Sedona Chair

Regence Chest From Chintz & Company

Fushia Gold Cirque Striped Chest of Drawers From Chintz & Company

 

Indigo Cirque Chest & Platinum Cirque Chest of Drawers From Chintz & Company