A Régence style gilt-bronze-mounted kingwood and tulipwood parquetry bureau plat, second half 19th century, after a model attributed to Charles Cressent

Acquired by the grandfather and thence by descent to the present owners; This item is mentioned on the Gut Umschoss inventory made up in 1959 by a Mr. Berger, no. 8 Grosser Prunkscheibtisch (Bureau-Plat)..….. in der Werkstatte von Cr. Cressent gearbeitet.

This desk, incorporating distinctive ‘espagnolettes’ at its corners depicting female figures with ostrich-feather headdresses, is to well-documented model attributed to the prominent ébéniste Charles Cressent, of which the original is now in the collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California (27.18). A 1723 list of the bronzes in Cressent’s workshop drawn up by representatives of the guild of founders mentions some bronzes that match those on the present lot closely, describing them as “quatre termes de moyenne grandeur avec des testes de femmes coiffées de plumes et aigrettes, dont le buste est en console”. Charles Cressent, who trained as a sculpture, is generally associated with his pieces from the Régence period that incorporate imaginative high-relief mounts, but this bureau plat is an example of the incipient sense of Rococo movement that was starting to be felt in French furniture design. A virtually identical nineteenth-century copy of this bureau plat, signed by Linke, index nr. 795, was sold at Christie’s London, 19th Century Furniture, Sculpture and Works of Art, 29 March 2007, lot 28.