BY JEAN HOLTHAUSEN, CIRCA 1775

Details

A LOUIS XVI ORMOLU-MOUNTED TULIPWOOD AND MARQUETRY SECRETAIRE A ABBATANT
BY JEAN HOLTHAUSEN, CIRCA 1775
The moulded mottled white marble top with canted angles above a frieze drawer with Vitruvian scrolls, the fall-front inlaid with flower garlands and a pendant chinoiserie scene, the reverse fitted with a gilt-tooled green leather writing surface, the interior fitted with shelves and drawers, all above two flowering-urn inlaid doors enclosing a single shelf, the angles inlaid with paterae and simulated fluting, on shaped block feet, stamped 'JME J HOLTHAUSEN', the escutcheon to the fall later
49 ¾ in. (126.5 cm.) high; 31 ½ in. (80 cm.) wide; 14 ½ in. (37 cm.) deep

Provenance

With Bensimon, Paris.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Jean Holthausen, maître 1764.

Little is known about the German émigré ébéniste Holthausen but from his stamped pieces it appears that he mainly worked in the Louis XV style, decorating his cabinetwork with cube parquetry in rosewood or amaranth. A cube parquetry petit table Transition ronde stamped Holthausen is in the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. It is unusual to find work by him in the neoclassical style that this secrétaire à abattant exhibits. (P. Kjellberg, Le Mobilier Français du XVIIIè Siècle, Paris, 1998, p. 407.)

A secrétaire à abattant attributed to his fellow German émigre ébéniste Martin Ohneberg (maître 1773) with a very similar marquetry design to the fall-front was offered for sale at Kohn, Paris, 5 June 2009, lot 1104.

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