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Lot Essay
Auburtin Gaudron flourished in the rue Saint-Honoré from circa 1713. The C couronné poinon was a tax mark employed between March 1745 and February 1749 on any alloy containing copper.
This commode is designed in the antique manner associated with Jean Bérain (1657-1734), 'Dessinateur de la chambre et du Cabinet du Roi' to Louis XIV. Inlaid with bird-inhabited and acanthus-wrapped ribbon-scrolls celebrating 'Abundance through Labour', its flower-vases, symbolic of Peace and Plenty, are framed in baldequined compartments on either side of a satyr-masked canopy supported by Cupid-herms and revealing the labouring Hercules triumphing over the seven-headed Hydra. It may well have been executed by Auburtin Gaudron, an ébéniste extensively patronised by both the Garde-Meuble Royal and the Menus-Plaisirs, who stamped the closely related commode en première partie illustrated in Apollo Magazine, November 1977, and sold anonymously at Sotheby's Monaco, 16 June 1990, lot 837 (FF 2,886,000). A further commode of this form with closely related contre-partie top was acquired by Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild for Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire and was sold by the Earl of Rosebery at Sotheby's House sale, Mentmore, 18-20 May 1977, lot 469.
This commode is designed in the antique manner associated with Jean Bérain (1657-1734), 'Dessinateur de la chambre et du Cabinet du Roi' to Louis XIV. Inlaid with bird-inhabited and acanthus-wrapped ribbon-scrolls celebrating 'Abundance through Labour', its flower-vases, symbolic of Peace and Plenty, are framed in baldequined compartments on either side of a satyr-masked canopy supported by Cupid-herms and revealing the labouring Hercules triumphing over the seven-headed Hydra. It may well have been executed by Auburtin Gaudron, an ébéniste extensively patronised by both the Garde-Meuble Royal and the Menus-Plaisirs, who stamped the closely related commode en première partie illustrated in Apollo Magazine, November 1977, and sold anonymously at Sotheby's Monaco, 16 June 1990, lot 837 (FF 2,886,000). A further commode of this form with closely related contre-partie top was acquired by Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild for Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire and was sold by the Earl of Rosebery at Sotheby's House sale, Mentmore, 18-20 May 1977, lot 469.