Charles-Honoré Lannuier By Peter Kenny and Matthew Thurlow During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Duncan Phyfe and Charles-Honoré Lannuier were the acknowledged leaders of the New York furniture trade. Both immigrant craftsmen, they established a distinctive New York style of cabinetmaking that incorporated contemporary European design. Americans throughout the young nation considered their work to be the pinnacle of taste and sophistication. Honoré Lannuier trained in Paris as an ébéniste (the French term for cabinetmaker) before relocating to New York in 1803. From 1804 until his death in 1819, he operated a shop at 60 Broad Street, among the city's thriving manufacturing and financial districts. Lannuier first offered his patrons furniture executed in the delicate Directory (1795—99) style before moving on to the more robust French Consulate (1799—1804) and Empire (1804—15) approach. Extant artifacts reveal his reliance on journals and books published by French designers such as Pierre de La Mésangère (1761—1831), and Charles Percier (1764—1838) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762—1853). To compete with those working in the more restrained Anglo-American taste, though, Lannuier occasionally melded the two approaches into an assimilated style that would appeal to a broad range of consumers. Like Phyfe, Lannuier often incorporated decorative elements taken from the architecture and furnishings of ancient Greece and Rome. The ébéniste promoted his European training and knowledge of contemporary Parisian modes by attaching a trade label to his furniture that was written in both English and French. Phyfe and Lannuier often influenced one another's aesthetic approach.