Object Description
An Important Louis XVI Style Commode
By Henry Dasson
After the Design by Adam Weisweiler
For the King’s Cabinet at Saint-Cloud
Constructed from mahogany and incorporating well-cast and chased ormolu mounts, the breakfront side cabinet supported on six fluted toupie feet, the sides and tripartite front all paneled with ormolu double borders with three doors enclosing a shelved interior; the corners with distinctive freestanding and tapering columns, fluted and inlaid with brass filets, terminating in a ‘torsade’ gilded bronze capital flanking the frieze decorated with foliate rinceaux populated by ibixes and putti housing three lockable drawers below the Campan marble top in its gilded surround. Stamped twice to the carcass “Henry Dasson / 1887.”
French, dated 1887
The present commode is Henry Dasson’s rendition of the celebrated commode à vantaux made by Adam Weisweiler and supplied by his marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre to King Louis XVI for his Cabinet du Roi at the Château de Saint-Cloud in 1788, today on view at the Château de Compiègne. Weisweiler produced a series of these breakfront commodes, all with slight variations, including a pair found at the Louvre and another at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Made almost exactly one century after Weisweiler’s example, Dasson’s impeccable craftsmanship pays homage to the great ébéniste of the Ancien Régime.