19TH CENTURY AND LATER, THE PORCELAIN PROBABLY WEDGWOOD, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

The bureau-dressing-table is designed in Roentgen's Louis Seize 'goût Grèc' fashion recalling lyric poetry's triumph, and is china-railed with sacred urn-capped pedestals like the raised 'cartonnier' that is intended for a clock. While Venus-pearled libation-paterae enrich the fluted tablets above herm-tapered legs, their Egyptian striations recall the dress of the priestess Isis. The Etruscan-blue cameo was probably executed at Wedgwood's Birmingham manufactory and depicts the 'Choice of Hercules' with the triumphal hero ignoring a female figure, emblematic of vice, and choosing the high path indicated to the temple of virtue. This choice between the life of pleasure or of fame, was listed in Wedgwood's 1787 Catalogue as the 'Judgment of Hercules'. The Russian taste for such ornamental 'furniture' wares had been encouraged by the promotion of Wedgwood's manufactures by Lord Cathcart (d.1772), George III's Ambassador to St. Petersburg.