A Louis XV inlaid cabinet
Inlaid with palisander, rosewood, and boxwood on oak and softwood corpus, with ormolu rocaille mountings to the angles. An elegant two-doored piece with a bombé form front resting on bracket feet. The doors, serpentine sides and gable decorated with trompe l'oeil diaper patterns. Restored, the feet slightly shortened, subsequent shrinkage cracks. H 177.5, W 148, D 43 cm.
Paris, mid-18th C.
The most famous piece of furniture of this design is the cabinet created in around 1755 by Bernard II. Van Risen Burgh for Jean Baptiste de Machault d´Arnouville, who was the highest treasury official at the court of King Louis XV from 1745 onwards. The doors are inset with Chinese red-grounded lacquer panels of the Quianlong period and the frames are additionally reinforced with sumptuous fire-gilt bronze appliques. The piece is today housed in the Château de Versailles (inv. no. V5090).
The form of this type of cabinet, with its inswept gable and bracket feet, was developed during the Régence period and used up until the reign of Louis XVI. It was occasionally used as a design for fall front writing desks (known in French as secrétaire à abattant) but more frequently it was used for library cabinets, the door panels of which were fitted with mesh so that the treasures contained therein were visible to the admirer but remained guarded from unauthorised access.
Provenance
Private collection, Westphalia.
Literature
Cf. Kjellberg, Le mobilier français du XVIIIe siècle, Paris 2008, S. 722 f., a similar cabinet with the stamp of ein Jean Georges Raisin.
For the cabinet for the "contrôleur général des finances", Jean Baptiste de Machault d´Arnouville, cf. Arizzoli-Clémentel, Versailles Furniture of the Royal Palace 17th and 18th Centuries, vol. 2, Dijon 2002, no. 8.