An Empire Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany and Ebonised Bureau Plat

Object Description

An Empire Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany and Ebonised Bureau Plat.

This large bureau has a green coloured leather inset top above a frieze set to front and back with three drawers. The ends have pull-out slides inset with green leather. The frieze is mounted with gilt-bronze stars, palmettes and rosettes. The central medallion of medusa and the flanking busts are each pivoting escutcheons which reveal the keyholes of the drawers. The base consists of four lyres on plinths, joined by baluster rails.

France, Circa 1900.

Object History

The distinctive design of this bureau plat employs motifs familiar from the oeuvre of Napoleon’s architects Percier and Fontaine. The unusual lyre-shaped supports are characteristic of a brief fashion during the Empire period, of around 1804, when the cabinetmaker François-Honoré Georges Jacob-Desmalter delivered a dressing table with lyre-shaped legs for Empress Josephine’s boudoir at the Tuileries Palace (today at the Château de La Malmaison).

The specific antecedent for this bureau was sold at Hôtel Drouot in 2014. Attributed to Jacob-Desmalter with gilt-bronzes by Thomire, it was commissioned for the Minister of the Navy, Duke Denis Decrès (1761–1820), a Grand Officer of the Empire under Napoleon. Clearly an important model, the whereabouts of the Duke Decrès’ desk must have been known by the late 19th century, giving opportunity for a cabinetmaker to execute this all but identical and beautifully made example.

Object Details