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Lot Essay
The splendid 'Marlborough House' marble and mahogany pier-commode-table is enriched with festive golden bas-reliefs reflecting the poetic antique/Grecian fashion adopted by European courts in the 1760s.
Roman acanthus tablets flower the rectilinear chest's antique-fluted columnar corners, while Egyptian-striated ribbons frame the façade's Roman-tablet of flowered and garlanded acanthus that is borne by a mask of Pan, who is the chimerical man/goat ruler of paradisiacal Arcadia (see Ovid's Metamorphoses or Loves of the Gods), and the harvest-deity Ceres' libation-paterae embellish the frieze and provide trompe l'oeil drawer-handles in the form of 'Apollo' laurel-wreaths; lyric poetry is also celebrated by the sides' beribboned trophies of Cupid's rose-garlanded weapons accompanying Hymen's torch.
In Paris this elegant style was promoted by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's 'ébéniste mecanicien du Roi et de la Reine' the Neuweid-based David Roentgen (b.1743-d.1807), who was praised by Empress Catherine of Russia as the greatest ébéniste of the century.
Fidelys Schey, maitre in 1777.
Roman acanthus tablets flower the rectilinear chest's antique-fluted columnar corners, while Egyptian-striated ribbons frame the façade's Roman-tablet of flowered and garlanded acanthus that is borne by a mask of Pan, who is the chimerical man/goat ruler of paradisiacal Arcadia (see Ovid's Metamorphoses or Loves of the Gods), and the harvest-deity Ceres' libation-paterae embellish the frieze and provide trompe l'oeil drawer-handles in the form of 'Apollo' laurel-wreaths; lyric poetry is also celebrated by the sides' beribboned trophies of Cupid's rose-garlanded weapons accompanying Hymen's torch.
In Paris this elegant style was promoted by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's 'ébéniste mecanicien du Roi et de la Reine' the Neuweid-based David Roentgen (b.1743-d.1807), who was praised by Empress Catherine of Russia as the greatest ébéniste of the century.
Fidelys Schey, maitre in 1777.