A Pair of Louis XVI Style Mahogany and Satinwood Consoles Dessertes

Description

A Pair of Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany and Satinwood Side Cabinets or Consoles Dessertes.

Each of ‘D’-shape with white and pink-veined marble top surrounded by a three-quarter gallery. The frieze with finely cast flower-filled entrelac mounts. Fronted by a drawer with a relief cast panel of classical mythological scene of a seated goddess attended by handmaids. Between are Apollo masks. The open shelf is joined to a panelled back by filled-fluted pilasters with ionic capitals. On tapering legs.

French, Circa 1860.

This type of side cabinet is known in French as a commode servante or console desserte. Its form was born out of an increasing desire for privacy during the eighteenth century. The dessert course could be laid out on the marble top and open shelves so that guests could help themselves uninterrupted by servants.

These side cabinets are designed in the Louis XVI style which favoured rectilinear neoclassicism over the prettiness of the preceding Louis XV style. The entrelac Apollo masks and ionic capitals are familiar Greco-Roman motifs. The relief cast panel of a goddess attended by servants, who hold basins and mirrors, is set in a Grecian interior. These motifs are familiar from various furniture makers working for Louis XVI’s Queen, Marie-Antoinette, including Jean-Henri Riesener, Charles Saunier and Jean Leleu.

The present cabinets date to the 1860s when there was a revival of the Louis XVI style during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. Indicative of their exceptional quality is the profusion of gilt-bonze mounts, fine choice of timbers, superb cabinetry and rare breccia marble tops from the Pyrenees.