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Lot Essay
Adam Weisweiler, maître in 1778.
This superb gueridon, or table à thé, epitomizes the fashionable goût anglais of the 1780's promoted by the influential marchands-merciers of Paris, particularly Dominique Daguerre.
The mania for all things English led to a demand for innovative forms of practical furniture for the newly fashionable pastimes such as tea drinking. This table would originally also have had an additional, smaller platform, (sometimes adjustable) which would have been used to serve the tea or accompanying sweetmeats.
The influence of England is also manifested in its form, which derives from the Georgian tea tables of the 1760's and 1770's; the sober, relatively unadorned use of mahogany and burr yew wood (itself a quintessentially English wood) and the design of the pierced stretcher, which is clearly inspired by designs for stretchers for "breakfast tables" in Chippendale's Director of 1762.
The heir to Simon-Philippe Poirier's atelier, Dominique Daguerre, based in the rue St. Honoré, specialized in supplying objets de luxe to the French court and also to an extensive foreign clientele which famously included the 'Duc et Duchesse du Nord' (Grand Duke Paul and Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia, later the Tsar and Tsarina), and George, Prince of Wales, who employed him extensively to supply furnishings for his lavish new London residence, Carlton House. Such was the success of Daguerre's business in England (and his promotion of the goût anglais to his Parisian clients), that he even opened a shop in London in the 1780's in Piccadilly.
Adam Weisweiler worked extensively for the marchands-merciers, most particularly for Daguerre, and this innovative model of gueridon is associated exclusively with his oeuvre. Only two other examples are known in thuya or yew wood (all the others being entirely in mahogany): one in the Château de Versailles, formerly in the collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (illustrated in P. Arrizoli-Clémentel, Versailles Furniture of the Royal Palace, Dijon, 2002, vol.II, p. 127, cat. 42), and one recorded in the Lévy Collection in 1981 (see P. Lemonnier, Weisweiler, Paris, 1983, p. 187). The use of burr yew or thuya is particularly associated with Weisweiler's oeuvre, undoubtedly through Daguerre's influence, for instance on a famous series of commodes including one supplied by Daguerre to Louis XVI's cabinet at Versailles (illustrated Arrizoli-Clémentel op. cit.,, vol. I, p. 142), and another acquired by John, 5th Duke of Rutland, and later sold from the Champalimaud Collection, Christie's, London, 7 July 2005, lot 150.
This superb gueridon, or table à thé, epitomizes the fashionable goût anglais of the 1780's promoted by the influential marchands-merciers of Paris, particularly Dominique Daguerre.
The mania for all things English led to a demand for innovative forms of practical furniture for the newly fashionable pastimes such as tea drinking. This table would originally also have had an additional, smaller platform, (sometimes adjustable) which would have been used to serve the tea or accompanying sweetmeats.
The influence of England is also manifested in its form, which derives from the Georgian tea tables of the 1760's and 1770's; the sober, relatively unadorned use of mahogany and burr yew wood (itself a quintessentially English wood) and the design of the pierced stretcher, which is clearly inspired by designs for stretchers for "breakfast tables" in Chippendale's Director of 1762.
The heir to Simon-Philippe Poirier's atelier, Dominique Daguerre, based in the rue St. Honoré, specialized in supplying objets de luxe to the French court and also to an extensive foreign clientele which famously included the 'Duc et Duchesse du Nord' (Grand Duke Paul and Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia, later the Tsar and Tsarina), and George, Prince of Wales, who employed him extensively to supply furnishings for his lavish new London residence, Carlton House. Such was the success of Daguerre's business in England (and his promotion of the goût anglais to his Parisian clients), that he even opened a shop in London in the 1780's in Piccadilly.
Adam Weisweiler worked extensively for the marchands-merciers, most particularly for Daguerre, and this innovative model of gueridon is associated exclusively with his oeuvre. Only two other examples are known in thuya or yew wood (all the others being entirely in mahogany): one in the Château de Versailles, formerly in the collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (illustrated in P. Arrizoli-Clémentel, Versailles Furniture of the Royal Palace, Dijon, 2002, vol.II, p. 127, cat. 42), and one recorded in the Lévy Collection in 1981 (see P. Lemonnier, Weisweiler, Paris, 1983, p. 187). The use of burr yew or thuya is particularly associated with Weisweiler's oeuvre, undoubtedly through Daguerre's influence, for instance on a famous series of commodes including one supplied by Daguerre to Louis XVI's cabinet at Versailles (illustrated Arrizoli-Clémentel op. cit.,, vol. I, p. 142), and another acquired by John, 5th Duke of Rutland, and later sold from the Champalimaud Collection, Christie's, London, 7 July 2005, lot 150.