Ligne Roset Trolley

With enduring designs like the immensely plush, Pop art–inspired Togo lounge chair and sofa, Ligne Roset has become synonymous with radical luxury furniture. However, when Antoine Roset (1841–93) started the company in 1860 in the small French town of Oussiat, its focus was on wooden umbrella handles.

In 1892, Ligne Roset’s founder expanded with a property in Montagnieu where he set up a wood-processing factory, eventually expanding into manufacturing chairs. After his death, his wife, Marie-Victorine, took over before his son, Emile Roset, began leading the company in the 1910s.

It wasn’t until after World War II that Antoine’s grandson, Jean Roset, would recognize the need for furniture in settings like schools, hospitals and retirement homes and take inspiration from Scandinavian modern design for functional pieces made primarily from affordable beech.

Under Jean, Ligne Roset supplied quite a few European institutions with beautiful wood furnishings. In the 1970s, he shifted the company’s focus again, this time looking to domestic and residential markets. Around this time, Jean’s two sons, Pierre and Michel, joined the company.

Ligne Roset opened its first store in 1973 with one of the most popular collections being designer Michel Ducaroy’s Togo modular sofa and chairs — classics of contemporary French design that look like oversize bent pillows.

After the success of this initial designer collaboration, Ligne Roset brought on more guest designers over the following decades, including Didier Gomez, Pascal Mourgue, Peter Maly, Pierre Paulin, Inga Sempé and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. Paulin’s Elysée sofa and Pumpkin chair — designed in 1971 for Elysée Palace — are among the brand’s most popular pieces. In 1975, the company introduced its Cinna brand, known to collectors for the Sandra sofa designed by Annie Hiéronimus and other alluring seating.

Ligne Roset continues to be run by the Roset family who works on revolutionary furniture in partnership with a variety of collaborators. It has operated in Briord since 1973 where it produces its iconically sleek and innovative pieces.

Find new and vintage Ligne Roset sofas, lounge chairs, tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.

Forever a sleek and elegant furnishing that evokes luxury and sophistication, a vintage bar cart will prove both functional and fabulous in your living room.

Bar carts as we know them were originally conceived as tea trolleys — a modest-sized table on wheels, sometimes featuring both an upper and lower shelf — to help facilitate tea service during the Victorian era in England. Modern bar carts weren’t really a common fixture in American interiors until after the end of Prohibition in the 1930s, when they were rolled onto the sets of Hollywood films. There, they suggested wealth and status in the dining rooms of affluent characters.

As tough as the 1930s had been on the average working American, the postwar era yielded economic stability and growth in homeownership. Increasingly, bar carts designed by the likes of Edward Wormley and other furniture makers became an integral part of sunken living rooms across the United States in the 1950s.

Bar carts were a must-have addition to the sensuous and sleek low-profile furnishings that we now call mid-century modern, each outfitted with the finest spirits and savory snacks that people had to offer. And partially owing to critical darlings like Mad Men, vintage cocktail carts have since seen a resurgence and have even become a selling point in restaurants.

Bar carts not only boast tremendous utilitarian value but also introduce a fun, nostalgic dynamic to the layout of your space, be it in the bar area or elsewhere. In addition to showcasing your favorite bottles of rye and local small-batch gin — or juices and mocktail ingredients — there is an undeniable allure to stacking statement glassware, vintage martini cocktail shakers and Art Deco decanter sets atop your fully stocked mid-century modern bar cart. And one size or style doesn’t fit all — an evolution of cocktail cart design throughout history has yielded all manner of metal bar carts, rattan carts and more.

We invite you to add a few more dashes of class to cocktail hour — peruse the vast collection of antique and vintage carts and bar carts on 1stDibs today.