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Lot Essay
Charles Etienne Clavel, mitre-menuisier en btiments, from a bourgeois Parisian family, was born shortly after 1737. He died 3 August 1776 in rue Saint-Martin in Paris two years after marrying the widow of a mitre-joallier. In 1776 he was described as l'ancien mitre menuisier bniste, proof that he was no longer working by that date.
Continuing a tradition forged by Andr-Charles Boulle in the Louis XIV period for monumental and hugely expensive and elaborate armoires - which was continued by Cressent through the Rgence - this exceptional armoire clearly reflects the influence of the oeuvre of BVRB (matre in 1730; see lot 107). By the mid-eighteenth Century, however, the demand for new smaller-scale, more intimate appartements had rendered such monumental pieces largely obsolete.
Continuing a tradition forged by Andr-Charles Boulle in the Louis XIV period for monumental and hugely expensive and elaborate armoires - which was continued by Cressent through the Rgence - this exceptional armoire clearly reflects the influence of the oeuvre of BVRB (matre in 1730; see lot 107). By the mid-eighteenth Century, however, the demand for new smaller-scale, more intimate appartements had rendered such monumental pieces largely obsolete.