AN EMPIRE ORMOLU, PATINATED-BRONZE AND SPECIMEN MARBLE GUERIDON

Details

AN EMPIRE ORMOLU, PATINATED-BRONZE AND SPECIMEN MARBLE GUERIDON
The top centred with a stellar pattern expanding into an imbricated design of petals including breccia, rouge griotte, lapis lazuli, porphyry, onyx and others, within a verde antico border, inset in an egg-and-dart bronze border, the upper patinated bronze shaft concave-sided and mounted with caryatids, resting on splaying ormolu feet with patinated bronze sphinx-terminals, surrounding a conformingly supported cup, on a canted triangular platform with ormolu swan's-head capped feet flanking acanthus finials, above a concave-sided white marble plinth and on brass castors
19¾ in. (50 cm.) diam.; 29¾ in. (75.6 cm.) high

Provenance

Anonymous sale in these Rooms, 5 July 1984, lot 52 (£13,000).
Anonymous sale in these Rooms, 14 June 1990, lot 111 (£24,200).

Lot Essay

This mosaic marble slab, centred by a sunflowered medallion, is supported on a bronze obelisk-shaped pedestal with altar-tripod plinth conceived in the French Empire or 'antique' style promoted by C. Percier and P. F. L. Fontaine's Recueil des Décorations Intérieures, 1801. It displays caryatid 'bas-reliefs' in the manner of the bronzier Antoine-André Ravrio (d.1814), such as feature on the clocks delivered by Lepautre for the salon de l'appartement de ministre at the château de Fontainebleau in July 1810 ( J-P. Samoyault, Pendules et Bronzes d'Ameublement, Paris, 1989, p.72).

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