A Louis XV Style Bureau de Dame

Description

Of slightly bombé form and decorated à quatre faces. The hinged slope revealing a fitted interior. Mounted with channelled encadrements and rocaille clasps. The cabriole legs headed by pierced foliate chutes.

English, Circa 1840/50.

The design of this bureau de dame is indebted to the work Bernard II van Risenburgh, who stamped his furniture with the monogram BVRB. Made court ébéniste to King Louis XV in 1730. This model of small secrétaire was an invention of BVRB, who designed it with smaller interiors, such as bedrooms, in mind. Consequently his pursed a more feminine form for such writing desks, of curvaceous shape and with a hinged slanted flap, now generally known as a secrétaire à pente. BVRB made different bureaux in marquetry of precious timbers, decorated with lacquer or applied with porcelain plaques. One such example in superb marquetry, was supplied by Thomas-Joachim Hébert in 1745 for the Cabinet Interieur of the Dauphine, Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, at Versailles (D. Meyer, Le Mobilier de Versailles, vol. I, Dijon, 2002, pp. 108-111, no. 29).

The established fame of the model and the delicate proportions of these desks greatly appealed to nineteenth century collectors with many of BVRB’s bureaux making their way into English aristocratic collections after the French revolution. Such was demand in England, that from the 1830s, leading London cabinetmakers, notably the dealer-maker Edward Holmes Baldock (1777–1845), began to produce bureaux of their own. The present writing-desk is one such English made example dating to the middle of the nineteenth century. Baldock supplied a related example in 1838 to the 5th Duchess of Buccleuch described as ‘An inlaid secretaire with a fall down front’ (illustrated in C. Payne, British Furniture 1820-1920: The Luxury Market, Woodbridge, 2023, Fig. 2.28a, p. 78).