E. Kahn & Cie. active late 19th/early 20th century A pair of Louis XVI style gilt bronze mounted mahogany and sycamore pedestals, Paris, late 19th century, after the celebrated models by Jean Henry Riesener, the bronze cast by E. Kahn

of tapering form, surmounted by brèche violette marble tops, one bronze mount has been removed to reveal the mark E. Kahn from the bronze master model

D. Alcoufle, Furniture Collection in the Louvre, Dijon, 1993, vol I, p. 266, no. 96

The present pair of pedestals are a copy of the celebrated model made circa 1785, surmounted by a clock adorned by cloud-born putti, attributed to Jean-Henri Riesener and now in the permanent collection of the Musée du Louvre (cat. C.Dr., No 185).

This was one of the most popular of the eighteenth century models admired and copied by the finest cabinetmakers of the late nineteenth century. Interestingly, a barometer version of the clock, also in the Louvre, was made by the cabinetmaker Guillaume Grohé circa 1860, whose work was described at the 1867 Exposition Universelle as 'supéieurs à ceux de Riesener et Gouthière'. François Linke also made a model, archive number 852.

E. Kahn & Cie. was a company that produced and sold the most celebrated French eighteenth-century models after models by Weisweiler, Stockel, Benneman, Cressent, Gaudreaux and Riesener as in the present lot.  He is also known to have produced and sold the Edwardian furniture fashionable at that time in London.  In England, his company was advertised as E. Kahn & Co. Ltd., "Manufacturers of Furniture and Upholstery, specialists in lacquered furniture, wholesale & export," with premises at 6-10 St. Andrew St. and 18-21 Charlotte St. and with a factory at 19-51 Gough St.  In Paris, he was located at 84, avenue Ledru-Rollin in the 12th arrondissement.  To Kahn's credit, François Linke allowed one of his most important creations, the grand bureau, index number 550 (for which he won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle) to be illustrated in his London brochure.