Lot Essay
This brass-enriched bureau, supported on hermed legs, is designed in the elegant French/antique style adopted at Neuwied by David Roentgen (d. 1807), ébéniste mécanicien to Louis XVI, while working for the Russian court in the 1780s. The form of the brass-galleried 'cartonnier', whose Doric-pilastered and triumphal-arched facade is brass-enriched with husk-festoons and Egyptian-striated panels, is echoed in the bureau interior. The cylinder, flanked by striated ribbon tablets, has its rich-figured veneer sunk in panelled tablets with brass-moulded frames. The feature is echoed on the drawer facades, while the tablets flanking the table-frame are embellished with Roman acanthus and brass flutes. Its feature of screw-fixed legs to facilitate package and transport was an idiosyncracy of Roentgen furniture at this period. A group of bureaux of related form are discussed in D. Fabian, Abraham und David Roentgen, Bad Neustadt, 1996, pp. 106-7, figs. 231-234. A related desk was sold anonymously from the 'Property of a private American collector' at Sotheby's New York, 27 Oct. 1990, lot 94, while another related desk was offered anonymously at Sotheby's 16 June 1995, lot 62.