Object Description
A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Parquetry and Marquetry Fall-Front Secrétaire with a Marble Top.
France, Circa 1890.
Stamped to the carcass ‘10298’.
This elegantly shaped Secrétaire is decorated all over with foliate lattice inlay and has an inset marble top with three quarter gallery, above a central fall-front door and two cupboard doors. The canted uprights are headed by gilt-bronze ribbon tied mounts and the Secretaire terminates in ogee feet with gilt-bronze rosettes, untied by a shaped apron centred by a fine fronded acanthus mount.
The fall front is enlivened by a very fine gilt-bronze framed, patinated bronze relief; an allegory of Water, with putti playing with a Dolphin, in the manner of Clodion, possibly after a drawing by Givanni Battista Cipriani.