A LOUIS XVI STYLE ORMOLU-MOUNTED JADE AND PORPHYRY CENTERPIECE

LATE 19TH CENTURY, THE JADE BOWL 18TH CENTURY

Details

A LOUIS XVI STYLE ORMOLU-MOUNTED JADE AND PORPHYRY CENTERPIECE
late 19th century, the jade bowl 18th century
En suite with the preceding lot, with a gray-green jade mughal style flower-form oval bowl, on a scrolling foliate-cast tripartite base ending in foliate claw feet and with central fluted support encircled by a serpent, the quadripartite base hung with drapery on a columnar plinth hung with garlands and laurel leaf-cast base and square plinth with gadrooned bun feet, the underside of the base stamped N PICARD
13½in. (34cm.) high, 6¼in. (15.5cm.) square

Provenance

Collection of Mme. de Polès, Paris, sold Galerie Georges Petit, 22-24 June 1927, lot 180
Anon. sale, Sotheby's Monaco, 14 June 1982, lot 418

Lot Essay

The sympathetic design, superb quality of the workmanship and materials of the centerpiece would almost certainly point to the work of Louis-Auguste-Alfred Beurdeley (d. 1882) and his son Alfred-Emmanuel-Louis Beurdeley (d. 1919). In the late 19th century, the Beurdeley's firm specialized not only in copies of 18th century pieces in public collections, but objects of their own creation primarily in the Louis XVI style. Additionally, they possessed a stock of 18th century gilt bronze elements which they re-used in their pieces. The quality was so good that even in 1886 Alfred Champeaux wrote that some of their pieces "ont été vendus comme des pièces anciennes" (P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIième Siècle, 1987, pp. 337-339).
The stamp appears to be unrecorded.