Smoking room

The smoking room has brown velvet wall coverings. These are only slightly darker than the panelling and the wood of the furniture. Brown was a fashionable colour in Paris around 1775. The different shades had all kinds of colourful names such as caca-dauphin or merde d'oie. Smoking was very popular. As the earthenware pot with the inscription Tabac de Virginie 1786 suggests, tobacco was imported from the United States. But tobacco was also grown in large quantities around Leper in the second half of the 18th century. It was chewed, sniffed or smoked in a pipe. Cigars and cigarettes would not become popular until the 19th century.