A Rare Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany Cylinder Bureau

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Object Description

A Rare Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany Cylinder Bureau. By François Linke, Paris. Index Number 100. France, Circa 1890.

The top with three quarter pierced gallery. The cylinder front centred by a gilt-bronze foliate framed oval decorated with floral marquetry and a harp and books representing lyric poetry. Flanked by twin-light gilt-bronze candelabra. The roll-top enclosing an arrangement of four small drawers and five small compartments above a gilt-tooled green leather writing surface. The frieze fronted by a central drawer with spring-loaded secret release and faced with a relief-cast plaque of cloudborne putti representing the arts. The flanking drawers with gilt-bronze acanthus cast handles and fruiting cornucopia escutcheons. The sides with gilt-bronze relief cast plaques of putti emblematic of sculpture. The reverse with a gilt-bronze rose wreath. On square section tapering legs.

The locks signed to the reverse ‘Ct. Linke / Serrurerie / Paris’.

In total François Linke is recorded to have made ten examples of this cylinder bureau This one is richly veneered in plum-pudding mahogany and it was also available in amaranth or plane and satiné with various complexities of marquetry. Of these ten, the present example is amongst the most superior, it few were made with gilt-bronze candle arms flanking the cylinder. In Linke’s register it is recorded as index number 100 with the title ‘Bureaux à cylindre, Louis XVI Marie-Antoinette’. This is in reference to the Louis XVI model of roll-top desk on which Linke’s version is based. The original bureau was supplied by Jean-Henri Riesener for Marie-Antoinette at the Tuileries in 1784 (Inv. No. OA 5226 Musée du Louvre). The exhibition of the original bureau at the retrospective Exposition de l’union centrale des arts décoratifs of 1882 was the inspiration for late 19th century copies of the model by leading Parisian ébénistes, and the model was made by Beurdeley, Dasson, Durand as well as Linke.

France, Circa 1890.

Object History

François Linke (1855 – 1946) was the most important Parisian cabinet maker of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and possibly the most sought after cabinet maker of his period.

Object Literature

C. Payne, Linke, Blue Daybook entry, p. 475, for the Blue Daybook entry; and p. 488, for a black and white cliché of index number 100.
D. Alcouffe et al., Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Vol. I, p. 283-285, for an illustration and discussion of the 18th century model.

Object Details

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