The forest green painted pine washstand, now serving as a hall or console table, with painted highlights and stenciled gilt tracery detailing having a shaped and beveled edged white marble top over a compartmentalised frieze drawer displaying the original porcelain knob handles, the whole on scrolled swan neck supports joined by a platform stretcher, surviving from the third quarter of nineteenth century northern Germany.
Unknown.
The continental provincial feel of the paintwork and tracery has rococo, gothic and black forest influences to it with this piece fitting into the Neo-Renaissance period in Germany c.1845-1900. As elsewhere in Europe, the fashionable styles in northern lands reflected only the tastes and symbols of the aristocratic class, although some of these styles filtered down through the classes and accommodated themselves to indigenous skills and tastes. Woodcarving is a local art where wood is abundant and appreciated, such as the Alps and the Black Forest. German craftsmen produced unique furniture in provincial regions from the earlier times through to the Industrial Revolution and this piece is very much part of that period.
More likely now to be used as a hall or console table, and a splendid one it would make too.
The piece shows some rather attractive wear and tear to the paintwork making it very decorative with scuffing commensurate with its age, but the whole is superbly original order and the drawer runs smooth, having three compartments to it, with the carcass structurally sound. There are two filled in holes to the back section of the marble top which aren’t particularly visible where once a mirror was in place and some other small tarnish marks as one would expect.
By appointment only.
