Offered by Franck Baptiste Provence
Monumental cabinet in solid mahogany opening with two doors on the front.
Model strongly curved, concave and convex on the front and on the sides.
Framed doors, that is to say, surrounded by large beaded moldings.
The three door panels are monoxyles (carved from a single piece of wood), they are nervously cut and framed with strongly protruding moldings.
Those in the middle are inlaid on the front and on the sides with a marquetry of cubes in lemon, ebony and fruitwood veneer.
The low scalloped crosspieces finely carved with flower baskets and acanthus foliage.
The central frame carved with a firepot on a mound, accompanied by garlands of flowers, fruits, and two olive branches tied together.
The four feet rolled up in snails simulate the heads of rams.
The double-sided doors are also molded and carefully finished on the internal faces, they reveal an interior with two shelves in the upper part and a rare curved mahogany sideboard in the lower part.
They are richly adorned with an important ornamentation of cut ironwork decorated with arabesques and openwork palmettes including two keyholes, a scissor lock and a lock with five pins.
Finally, the wardrobe is topped with a cornice in a gendarme's hat with triple evolutions.
Very good condition, original key.
Bordeaux work from the Louis XV period around 1760.
Dimensions:
Height: 297 cm
Rear width: 196 cm; Front width: 150 cm
Depth: 70 cm
Provenance: family property Pessac-Léognan then by succession.
Our opinion :
With its monumental size of three meters and its impressive rear offset of 23 cm per side, our solid mahogany cabinet is characteristic of Bordeaux presentation furniture.
Intended to present silverware and above all to sublimate the financial power of its owner, this type of furniture was the prerogative of the commercial elite in the 18th century, a period or thanks to triangular trade, the city will be one of the most popular cities. most prosperous in the world.
Our wardrobe takes the classic Bordeaux configuration, with high quality solid mahogany wood, generous curves, an interior sideboard and oversized ironwork while remaining very fine.
These features can be admired on the cupboard or on the scriban-library kept at the hotel de Lalande, which is now the museum of decorative arts in Bordeaux.
Our model is distinguished by its rare inlays of geometric inlays which are a real "snub" made by our cabinetmaker to his Parisian rivals.
Indeed, this type of marquetry is known under the name of "Oeben cubes", in reference to the famous cabinetmaker of King Louis XV, Jean François Oeben (1721-1763), who made this kind of particularly difficult mosaic fashionable.
This very particular decoration allows us to precisely date our furniture from the 1760s and informs us about the fact that our cabinetmaker knew or at least had seen, the latest fashionable creations in Versailles.
The cabinetmaker and the client of the cabinet wanted to send a strong message, indicating that here, in Bordeaux, they knew just as well how to work in bulk with exotic woods, as they did to achieve finesse, the most complex inlays.
Abundance, power, but also finesse and delicacy perfectly describe this curved wardrobe which is in our eyes one of the most beautiful known to date.
