CIRCA 1870

The fashion for displaying Sèvres porcelain plaques around the frieze of a bureau plat was probably started by the influential marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier who commissioned plaques directly from the Sèvres manufactory. The small group of surviving pieces of late Louis XV bureaux with such Sèvres decoration include a bureau plat by Joseph in the James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor and another in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton, Northamptonshire. In England, Edward Holmes Baldock, an English marchand-mercier established his business in the early 19th century and became known who for modifying furniture for contemporary tastes, incorporating antique porcelain, marquetry or boulle panels. By the middle of the 19th century firms such as Town & Emanuel of New Bond Street continued the tradition, their trade label even stating `Tables inlaid with fine Sevre & Dresden China’ (See C.Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700 - 1840, Leeds, 1996, pp. 77 – 80, pls. 43, 44 and 49, and p.450, pl.903.).