Attribution of the Sené dynasty seating furniture based on author’s stamps: Experience and challenges

The study aims to determine the authorship of furniture from the ASG Large Collection of Fine Arts based on the analysis of author’s marks of representatives of the Sené dynasty. The study examines 18th-century Parisian ébéniste furniture from state collections, auctions, and galleries. The results of attributing eight Rococo and Neoclassical-era armchairs and two canapés from the ASG collection are presented. The study is novel in that it is the first one to publish photographs of Sené family marks on objects from the collection. The study reveals the SENE mark, which may be a late 19th-century mark. It was determined that nine pieces were made by prominent members of the Sené family, i.e., Claude I and Jean-Baptiste Claude, who worked for King Louis XVI. The furniture is marked with the author’s stamp, corresponding to the reference samples published in monographs by French experts, as well as on the websites of state museums and trade houses. The ébénistes used classic-style stamps with initials. One of the neoclassical canapés from the ASG collection has an unusual stamp without the master’s initials. Determining the author of this canape is difficult today, as three masters of the Sené family worked in the style of Louis XVI’s reign, and there is limited comparative material. During our research, we found only one set of furniture with a similar stamp, currently located in France in the gallery Antiquités Philippe Glédel. Experts consider this stamp to be apocryphal and doubt its authenticity.