Antique Victorian Furniture – Who Was Alexander Roux?

Alexander Roux (pronounced “Roo”) was one of America’s greatest Victorian-era cabinetmakers, and today his name commands great respect in the world of furniture. antique victorian furniture.

Born in France in 1813, Roux was trained in a guild in his native country in the style of the Rococo Revival. In the 1830s he emigrated to the United States. And in 1836 (possibly 1837) he opened a store in New York City. Because French furniture was all the rage in New York at the time, Roux called himself, both in his advertisements and on his furniture, a “French cabinetmaker.”

His business prospered. In the 1850s he had 120 artisans at his service. Roux used new technologies, such as steam saws and routers, which allowed it to quickly shape its wood. This gave him more time to work on his fantastically ornate carvings.

Roux is best known for his rococo pieces, but he didn’t limit himself to that style. In fact, he brought his expertise to the changing fashions of the time: the Gothic Revival in the 1840s; Elizabethan and Renaissance, as well as Rococo, in the 1850s; Neo-Grec in the 1860s.

Roux built high-quality parts for elite clients like William B. Astor. In 1853 he exhibited his work at the Crystal Palace exhibition in New York City. Roux’s business was immensely profitable. He reportedly made up to $ 500,000 in the 1870s, a large sum for the day.

Roux was married three times and had six children. For a year, in 1847, his brother Frederick joined the firm. Roux himself finally retired in 1881 and handed the business over to his son Alexander J. Roux, who kept it until 1898.

Roux’s store occupied several locations in New York, including five different locations on Broadway and one on Fifth Avenue. 19th century America, with its new wealth and technology, proved to be the perfect place for Roux to develop its unique craftsmanship.

His work displays an individuality of thought and freedom of form that make it highly desirable today among collectors of antique victorian furniture. His Rococo pieces contain an unusual variety of naturalistic carvings such as pomegranates and pineapples, heads of deer, wolves and dogs, crabs, lobsters, and other marine life. Roux preferred elegant woods like walnut, even using them as secondary interior woods.

In 2000, one of Roux’s elaborate sideboards was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in an exhibit called Art and the Empire City, 1825-1861.

Alexander Roux died in 1886.