Rare and important commode


Paris, end of the reign of Louis XIV of France, circa 1715
Material: "Ear of Wheat" amaranthine veneer, gild bronze, griotte red marble top

H. 93 cm - W. 162,5 cm - D. 69,5 cm (36 5/8 in - 64 in - 27 3/8 in)

Displaying a crate entirely adorned with a veneer of beautiful amaranthine leaves “ear of wheat” arranged straight or crooked, the commode we offer is a rare testimony of the exceptional luxury of the great Parisian art of cabinetmaking of the end of the reign of Louis XIV of France, which, through the sobriety and elegance of veneer wood schemes, announces the great royal and princely achievements of the Regency and Louis XV periods. Its rectangular composition, revisiting the form of some monumental cabinets of the previous century, is of a “severe” neoclassicism.

It opens by four large drawers in front disposed on four rows; the curved treatment of the mounts and front feet brings the furniture to life with elegance. The overall is very richly enlivened with a bronze ornamentation finely chiseled and gilded such as: framework of the drawers and lateral side in rod with stylized leaves friezes; mobile handles curvilinear attached to console table ending with pellets acanthus from which slip horns of plenty filled with bunches of flowers and leaves, with a setting of rush with flutes, imaginary animals heads, cartouches underlined with mantling and centered with bearded men masks on checkered backgrounds, keyholes with smiling Bacchus masks, wearing gilded vines, and underlined with double acanthus sticks ending in scrolls on the top of pellets with foliage and seeds; angles under the form of satyrs masks of which the beards twist themselves, wearing bunches of foliage animated of double sticks ending in scrolls centered with roses; and finally, the lower part of the furniture and the “Rocaille” claw-feet are hemstitched or pierced with an egg-shaped pattern and are decorated with palm leaf pattern, shell, sticks, bunches of foliage and stylized pomegranate.
The tabletop is in griotte red marble from Italy.
 
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