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Lot Essay
This desk with its canted Egyptian priestess head herm-supports and stepped cornice, relates to a desk, formerly in the Winterpalace, that is attributed to the Russian court cabinet-maker Heinrich Gambs (d. 1831) and which is now in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (A. Chenevière, Russian Furniture, London, 1988, p. 149, fig. 144, and 'St. Petersburg um 1800', exhibition catalogue, Recklinghausen, 1990, p. 417, cat. 378). David Roentgen, under whom Gambs had trained, unsuccessfully attempted to set up a collaboration between him and Gambs between 1789 and 1790 and make him his representative in St. Petersburg. Gambs emigrated in these years to Russia and established his own rapidly growing workshop that opened a furniture shop linked to it by 1795. In 1810 he was nominated Imperial Court Furniture Supplier and in an inventory of the Hermitage in 1811 there were already 135 pieces of his identified. His firm was continued by his sons Peter (d. 1871) and Ernst (d. 1849) and existed for over seventy years.
The former step-corniced secrétaire-cartonnier relates to a form illustrated in 1800 in Sammlung von Zeichnungen der neuesten Londoner und Pariser Meubles, Leipzig, fig. 7 (G. Himmelheber, Deutsche Möbelvorlagen, Munich, 1988, p. 238, no. 999), while the canted herm-supports feature in the same publication (fig. 1) on a table (Himmelheber, op. cit., p. 329, no. 1591).
The former step-corniced secrétaire-cartonnier relates to a form illustrated in 1800 in Sammlung von Zeichnungen der neuesten Londoner und Pariser Meubles, Leipzig, fig. 7 (G. Himmelheber, Deutsche Möbelvorlagen, Munich, 1988, p. 238, no. 999), while the canted herm-supports feature in the same publication (fig. 1) on a table (Himmelheber, op. cit., p. 329, no. 1591).