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Lot Essay
Adam Weisweiler, maître in 1780.
This circular breakfast/tea-table, designed in the Louis XVI antique manner, comprises a Roman-altar drum, whose Grecian sea-green marble slab is wreathed by a china-tray ormolu gallery that is fretted in a lozenge-trellised basket-weave. Echinous bas-reliefs band the table friezes' silken-figured mahogany tablets, which reflect the goût anglais or English taste of the 1780s, and these are accompanied by Grecian-black tablets and ribbon-bands. The altar-capped and herm-tapered columnar legs are inlaid with trompe l'oeil flutes; while silvery Grecian palms flower their Grecian-scrolled stretchers and their glazed ewer-stand, whose trompe l'oeil porcelain in verre eglomisé. The use, verre églomisé flanked by Grecian palmette clasps is extremely progressive in design and heralds the Empire style of circa 1800.
That Weisweiler and Daguerre were prepared to innovate with new materials is confirmed by their use of gouache sous verre. This technique was adopted by Daguerre for furniture commissioned in the late 1780s by Marie-Christine, gouverneur des Pays-Bas, which was executed by Adam Weisweiler.
Related ewer-decked tables, with this leg pattern, were acquired by Count Alexander Strogonoff (d.1811) (M.Segoura, Weisweiler, Paris, 1983, no.140). Amongst the related circular tables bearing Weisweiler's stamp, one is in the Detroit Institute of Art and another with glazed top and stretcher-tablette is in a private collection (ibid, nos. 174. and 175 pp. 186 and 187).
This circular breakfast/tea-table, designed in the Louis XVI antique manner, comprises a Roman-altar drum, whose Grecian sea-green marble slab is wreathed by a china-tray ormolu gallery that is fretted in a lozenge-trellised basket-weave. Echinous bas-reliefs band the table friezes' silken-figured mahogany tablets, which reflect the goût anglais or English taste of the 1780s, and these are accompanied by Grecian-black tablets and ribbon-bands. The altar-capped and herm-tapered columnar legs are inlaid with trompe l'oeil flutes; while silvery Grecian palms flower their Grecian-scrolled stretchers and their glazed ewer-stand, whose trompe l'oeil porcelain in verre eglomisé. The use, verre églomisé flanked by Grecian palmette clasps is extremely progressive in design and heralds the Empire style of circa 1800.
That Weisweiler and Daguerre were prepared to innovate with new materials is confirmed by their use of gouache sous verre. This technique was adopted by Daguerre for furniture commissioned in the late 1780s by Marie-Christine, gouverneur des Pays-Bas, which was executed by Adam Weisweiler.
Related ewer-decked tables, with this leg pattern, were acquired by Count Alexander Strogonoff (d.1811) (M.Segoura, Weisweiler, Paris, 1983, no.140). Amongst the related circular tables bearing Weisweiler's stamp, one is in the Detroit Institute of Art and another with glazed top and stretcher-tablette is in a private collection (ibid, nos. 174. and 175 pp. 186 and 187).