Jean-Joseph Chapuis was an important Belgian furniture designer who was active mainly in the first half of the nineteenth century. Occasionally confused with the Parisian furniture maker Claude Chapuis in his lifetime, he has since become a well-known figure in studies of design history that trace the development of modernism to the turn of the nineteenth century. Along with Samuel Gragg’s chairs of the same period, the present design is often cited as an important early example of the use of laminated bentwood in furniture. Chapuis used bent laminates to great effect in fashioning rounded seats that echoed the curule-form bases of his chairs. Examples of this model are in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Neue Sammlung, Munich and Vitra Museum, Weil am Rhein. The present lot is one of six examples painted in white and gold known to exist.