What emanates from the gilded armchairs and yellow damask sofas on the second floor of the White House is not always polite.

He wanted to take one of the gilded armchairs, but would not let himself.

At the far end of the room, nine heavily carved and gilded armchairs stood like thrones atop a high stair-fronted white dais, the center chair with a back higher than any other.

More flows of Air fastened Shiaine to her gilded armchair.

Elsewhere, a single gilded armchair serves as a screen on which Ms. Singh's photographs from Allahabad, Calcutta, Boston and Venice are projected.

In the first, priced at $1.2 million, a bejeweled (and European-looking) empress sits on a carved and gilded (again, Western-style) armchair in a seaside pavilion watching as the emperor departs in a sailing boat filled with pink-cheeked oarsmen.

Among the historically significant offerings, the most important is a 1785 Philadelphia lyre-back gilded white armchair from a set of 12 once owned by George Washington.

Clinton Howell, a Manhattan dealer who specializes in 17th- to 19th-century English antiques, has a whimsical pair of gilded armchairs that may illustrate the value of the vetting process.

The first thing visitors to the Chinese Porcelain Company see is a window dressed with a set of gilded Russian armchairs upholstered in shocking orange.

He shifted repeatedly in a gilded armchair covered in green brocade, casually leaning back and propping up one of his legs from time to time.