Alfred-Emmanuel-Louis Beurdeley 1847-1919 A gilt bronze mounted satinwood and stained sycomore flower head trellis parquetry bureau plat, en première partie France, circa 1870

two frieze drawers and fitted with pull out writing surfaces to each sides, the carcass stamped A BEURDELEY / A PARIS to the underside, ivorine plaque MADE IN FRANCE and white-painted number 190 and a further two numbers on paper 246 and 381 to the underside

Sotheby's New York, April 19, 2007, A Private Collection: Volume 2, Important Furniture and Decoration Inspired by XVIII Century Models, lot 38

A. Pradère, French Furniture Makers, p. 325, fig. 371; and F. J. B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection: Furniture, Vol. II, pp. 302-303, for an illustration of the 18th century model, circa 1775-80, by Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer.

 The original desk was made circa 1775-80 by Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer (d.1804), reçu maître en 1771 , and one example was formerly in the Derek Fitzgerald Collection (see: Pradère, p. 325). A renowned cabinetmaker as well as a marchand-mercier, Cramer commissioned furniture from many celebrated contemporaries such as R.V.L.C, Topino, Roussel and Dautriche, to name but a few. His clientele included the Duc de Montmorency, the Duchesse du Châtelet and the Prince de Broglie. Pieces of his oeuvre are now in the Louvre in Paris, the musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris and the Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. Gerard Calvet, the recently retired Parisien dealer of high quality 19th century French furniture, whose father knew the Beurdeley family as well as François Linke, has a similar version of the premiere-partie desk, as in the present lot, purchased directly from the Beurdeley family.