A REGENCE GILTWOOD CENTRE TABLE

Designed in the Louis XIV 'antique' manner, this table de milieu reflects the influence of Jean Bérain (d. 1711), who succeeded as Déssinateur de la chambre et du Cabinet du Roi in 1674. Its distinctive acanthus-wrapped in scrolled feet, stepped stretchers and foliate-wrapped trusses, however, correspond more closely to the oeuvre of Jacques-François Blondel (1705-74), the nephew of the architect François Blondel (1683-1756), such as featured on his design for torchères pour la décoration des appartements published as plate 94 in De la Distribution des maisons de plaisance, vol. 2, of 1737-8. Such feet existed earlier as evidenced by a late 17th Century engraving entitled Dames jouans au jeu des portiques by Jolin, now in the Biblothèque Nationale, Paris (N. de Reyniès, Le Mobilier Domestique, Paris, 1987, tom. 1, p. 415, fig. 1482).