Lot Essay
The rectangular tambour-desk with balustraded Grecian stepped-cornice for vases, clock or sculpture, reflects the elegant 'antique' style introduced by David Roentgen (d. 1807), cabinet-maker of Neuwied-am-Rhine and Ebeniste mécanicien to Louis XVI, while working for the Russian Court in the later 1780s. A desk of this form that was sent to Russia about 1785, includes the hermed legs, fine figured mahogany and restrained ormolu enrichments of flat-banded mouldings, Egyptian-striated panels, paterae and pearled borders. It is now displayed together with matching games-tables in the Palace of Pavlovsk (see: J.M. Greber, Abraham und David Roentgen, Starnberg, 1980, fig. 680). It shares other features, including the ribboned laurel-wreath handles and roll-top panel with shallow recessed borders, with a desk, now displayed in the Hohenzollernmuseum, Berlin (see: Greber, op cit., fig. 675)