拍品專文
The Grecian-black inkstand (plateau-écritoire), serving as an ornamental garniture for a desk, is richly sculpted in the 'antique' fashion promoted by C. Percier and P. Fontaine's Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, 1801; and evokes the poetry-deity Apollo with its swan-guarded urn and baskets. Such decorative objets d'art were a speciality of the Parisian art-dealers (marchands merciers) such as Martin-Eloi Lignereux (d.1809) of the rue Saint-Honoré, who was patronised by a number of the British, such as Lord Elgin.