A Berlin fall front writing cabinet - image-1
A Berlin fall front writing cabinet - image-2
A Berlin fall front writing cabinet - image-1A Berlin fall front writing cabinet - image-2

Lot 431 D‡α

A Berlin fall front writing cabinet

Auction 1220 - overview Cologne
17.05.2023, 14:00 - Furniture Decorative Arts
Estimate: 8.000 € - 10.000 €
Result: 10.080 € (incl. premium)
Print page
Watchlist

A Berlin fall front writing cabinet

Pyramid mahogany, various fruitwoods, maple, boxwood, ebony, and rosewood veneers on mahogany and softwood, replaced gold embossed green leather, gilded plaster, fire-gilt bronze/brass mountings, alabaster, deer horn. Two-part writing desk with three drawers in the lower section and writing cabinet above. The rounded upper terminal with a round door between two gilt plaster lions at the angles. The fall front writing surface concealing a sumptuous shrine-like interior with several drawers and secret compartments surrounding a central compartment. With a slanted folding lectern above the writing compartment and a leather-covered panel below. With old restored shrinkage cracks, a glued crack through one of the alabaster columns. H 194, W 101, D 54 cm.
Around 1815 - 20.

Literature

Cf. Himmelheber, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels, 3rd vol., Munich 1973, fig. 431, for a writing cabinet with very similar structure from Westphalia.
Cf. Stiegel, Berliner Möbelkunst. Vom Ende des 18. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Munich-Berlin 2003, p. 365, fig. 250, for the same construction with tapering elevation, above two winged sphinxes instead of lions.