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Lot Essay
Claude Montigny, maître in 1766.
This exquisite encrier, with its very pronounced Vitruvian scroll mount, is an early example of a small-scale item in the so-called goût grec style, the early phase of French neo-classicism.
Around 1754-1756, the first experimental items of furniture in this style were conceived and produced, notably the great ebony bureau plat made for Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully, probably by Joseph Baumhauer (died 1772) and Philippe Caffiéri (1714-1774) to the designs of Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1714-1759), which is now at the Musée Condé at Chantilly (S. Eriksen, Early neo-classicism in France, London 1974, figs. 85-89).
Within a few years, this bold manner had gained wide popularity, and in 1763 Baron de Grimm was writing in Paris: tout se fait aujourd'hui à la grecque (ibid, p. 264). In the field of furniture, too, the style had spread outside the sphere of a rarefied group of avant-garde patrons and collectors. One of the earliest recorded examples of goût grec furniture produced in lighter woods and on a less alarming scale, concerns the purchase in the years 1763-1765 by George William, 6th Earl of Coventry, of a number of items from the famous marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier. In 1763 Coventry acquired the celebrated commode by Roger Vandercruse, called Lacroix (sold, Christie's, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 264).
This exquisite encrier, with its very pronounced Vitruvian scroll mount, is an early example of a small-scale item in the so-called goût grec style, the early phase of French neo-classicism.
Around 1754-1756, the first experimental items of furniture in this style were conceived and produced, notably the great ebony bureau plat made for Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully, probably by Joseph Baumhauer (died 1772) and Philippe Caffiéri (1714-1774) to the designs of Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1714-1759), which is now at the Musée Condé at Chantilly (S. Eriksen, Early neo-classicism in France, London 1974, figs. 85-89).
Within a few years, this bold manner had gained wide popularity, and in 1763 Baron de Grimm was writing in Paris: tout se fait aujourd'hui à la grecque (ibid, p. 264). In the field of furniture, too, the style had spread outside the sphere of a rarefied group of avant-garde patrons and collectors. One of the earliest recorded examples of goût grec furniture produced in lighter woods and on a less alarming scale, concerns the purchase in the years 1763-1765 by George William, 6th Earl of Coventry, of a number of items from the famous marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier. In 1763 Coventry acquired the celebrated commode by Roger Vandercruse, called Lacroix (sold, Christie's, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 264).