CIRCA 1760, THE CHINESE BLACK AND GOLD LACQUER TRAYS PROBABLY FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

In their sense of movement and overall form, these stools display the influence of the architect Pierre Contant d'Ivry. D'Ivry is perhaps most celebrated for his designs for the Palais Bernstorff in Copenhagen, which were executed by the menuisier Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot circa 1755, and this commission included related carved furniture grafted with the first stirrings of New-Classicism (illustrated in B. Pallot, The Art of the Chair in Eighteenth-Century France, Paris, 1989, pp. 152-166). A watercolour sketch of an armchair, inscribed 'armchair for Luzierne' - presumably Louveciennes - and dated to circa 1769, is now at Versailles; this drawing, presumably by Charles de Wailly for Madame du Barry's pavillon at Louveciennes, displays a similarly garlanded and guilloched frieze (op. cit., p. 216).