Object Description
A pair of kingwood card tables by G. Durand, each with a shaped folding top above a serpentine frieze and elegant cabriole legs with gilt bronze foliate mounts, edges and sabots, decorated overall with superb marquetry panels of cross-grained foliate scrolls against a counter-cube trellis ground. Stamped ‘G. DURAND’ and bearing the paper label ‘E. MOUGIN, 6 Rue Castex, Doreur sur Cuir – Gainier – Garnisseur pour l’Ameublement, Paris’ who would have supplied the ormolu mounts. Circa 1890.
Footnote: A similar side cabinet by G. Durand appears in Denise Ledoux-Lebard’s ‘Le Mobilier Français du XIXe Siècle.’ In rosewood and purple-heart, it displays the same distinctive use of dark wood to create a silhouette effect in the floral sprays and the same cube-trellis in which the play of light is accentuated by the juxtaposition of cross-grained and counter-inlaid woods.