Re: Monday answer
Dan got it all. Although my answer differs slightly with some detail he is correct.
1. Though certainly not the only factor, a significant reason was because just before the Louis the XIV style (1643 to 1715), came to be at the palace at Versailles, it had solid silver furniture�tons of it. (Even with a pillow it had to be cold and uncomfortable.) Alas, at least 1600 (chairs, mirrors, tables, benches, candleholders, on and on) of the sterling pieces were removed and melted down in order to pay for France�s disastrous European wars. Still, party animal Lou WAS the Sun King, and he wanted things to glow and reflect light in any and all ways, so the ornate silver furniture was replaced by similarly detailed pieces, but this time using glass, fine wood, tortoise shell, ormolu, gilt.
2. The person most noted for the design was Andre-Charles Boulle, famous for highly detailed marquetry, nothing at all like the giant �puzzle� pieces of today, and ormolu mounts on furniture. The mounts were supposedly made to protect the corners of furniture with metal, but soon were just an excuse to replace the detailed figures and nature representative designs that were lost when the earlier silver furniture was melted down. If anyone would have named Charles Cressent, Pierre Gouthi�re, and/or Jacques Caffieri, Jean Berain, they would also count as key designers.
3. Ormolu (French for powdered gold) involved fire gilding (mostly) brass and bronze with mercury and gold as an amalgam. Soon craftsmen who were casting, chasing and engraving the pieces were dropping like flies in the furniture foundries and shops. Owing to nasty mercury poisoning, true Ormolu furniture is illegal and banned in the West. It therefore isn�t replicated. However, I�ve since researched a little and what happens in China stays in China so some new pieces do happen to appear in the high end market. If the Chinese fixed the poisoning problem it wasn�t mentioned. Ivory and tortoise is also banned for trade and sale if new so Dan is correct.
Extra Credit: The designs came to England because the Protestant French designers were literally getting pummeled by their Catholic �brothers� in the guilds. For awhile you had to repeat religious oaths to enter into a guild and they were controlled by the Crown who were Catholic, so instead of giving up their faith or getting beat to death, off these Huguenots sailed to England where they were welcomed at court and they spruced up the place in no small part to emulate what was happening in France. You might say masculine London had a severe case of Paris envy! When the revolution happened, the former Frenchmen were more than happy to be in England and their new designs developed along the preferences of the English nobility, with the added influence of the furniture and craftsmanship from East India Company. This led to the furniture forms known today as William and Mary, Queen Anne, Georgian, and a resurgence of the earlier Palladian styles.