CIRCA 1720

The commode, for a bedroom apartment window-pier, has its table-top Roman-mosaiced with a central lozenge-trellised compartment, and is banded by a golden ormolu reed moulding. Its cupid-bow form echoes that of the frame, with its projecting back pilasters and columnar front pilasters. The latter, ribbon-inlaid in trompe l'oeil flutes, display Venus-masks fretted in ribboned cartouches of Roman foliage. And, like the feets wave-scrolled cartouches, these are further enriched by the deity's 'shell' badge. Likewise, the drawers are framed in golden tablets, and parquetried en suite with the tops lozenged compartment to evoke the coffering of Rome's Temple of Venus.
A related boulle-veneered commode has been associated with the Faubourg Saint-Antoine marchand-ebéniste Nicolas Sageot (d.1731), who achived his maîtrise in 1706 (sold Christie's King Street, 14 December, 2000 lot 320).