.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The top of this brass-inlaid and tortoiseshell-veneered dressing-table displays a triumphal-arched cartouche with plinth-supported cassolettes, and Loves attending a husk-festooned chandelier, while pipe-bearing rustics and trumpeting warriors are incorporated in a scrolled, fret-trellised and vine-wreathed frame that derives from Jean Bérain's engraving celebrating Love's Triumph (T. A. Strange, French Interiors, Furniture, Decoration etc., London, 1950, p. 100).
The carcase, with paired and serpentined pilasters, has stretcher-tied and voluted truss feet similarly filigreed, while its frieze-drawer and flanking nests of drawers depict shell-badges and singing birds on baldaquin-draped plinths. A related dressing-table with serpentined 'sarcophagus' pilasters and very similar inlay on the faade was sold anonymously in these Rooms, 22 April 1982, lot 75. The ornament of the recessed compartment also relates to that of a dressing-table sold anonymously in these Rooms, 17 April 1975, lot 43.
This frame of decoration and the features can also be found on a writing-table in the Wallace Collection, which is centred by a vignette derived from Marie Daigremont's publication of Jean Bérain's engraving of Apollo enthroned of circa 1710. (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Furniture, London, 1996, vol. II, pp. 761-767, cat. 162). The latter also features closely related corner cartouches and lambrequin-drapery below the plinth embellished with addorsed sphynx.
The carcase, with paired and serpentined pilasters, has stretcher-tied and voluted truss feet similarly filigreed, while its frieze-drawer and flanking nests of drawers depict shell-badges and singing birds on baldaquin-draped plinths. A related dressing-table with serpentined 'sarcophagus' pilasters and very similar inlay on the faade was sold anonymously in these Rooms, 22 April 1982, lot 75. The ornament of the recessed compartment also relates to that of a dressing-table sold anonymously in these Rooms, 17 April 1975, lot 43.
This frame of decoration and the features can also be found on a writing-table in the Wallace Collection, which is centred by a vignette derived from Marie Daigremont's publication of Jean Bérain's engraving of Apollo enthroned of circa 1710. (P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Furniture, London, 1996, vol. II, pp. 761-767, cat. 162). The latter also features closely related corner cartouches and lambrequin-drapery below the plinth embellished with addorsed sphynx.