A Large Louis XVI Steel Door Knocker, Bordeaux, Last Quarter 18th Century

6 Cours de l’Intendance, Bordeaux.

Collection of Michel Rullier, sold Fraysse & Associés, Paris, 10 February 2011, lot 277.

H. Clouzot, Le Fer forgé: Documents artistiques de ferronnerie ancienne du Moyen-Age à la fin du XVIIIème siecle, Paris 1932, p.248.

L. Blanc, La Ferronerie à Bordeaux, Paris 1923, pl.b-26 (a drawing)

C. Vaudour, Forge & forgerons : jeux d'ombres et de lumière, Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône 2007, p.42.

At the heart of Bordeaux is the resplendent Cours de l’Intendance, a street lined with several historically significant hôtels particuliers with the rhythmic, classical façades of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. One of these surviving buildings from the pre-Revolutionary era is number 6, also called the ‘hôtel Lassalle de Roquefort’: this hôtel is one of Bordeaux’s listed Historical Monuments¹ and has been thoroughly discussed in a 2015 article by Xavier Roborel de Climens.² The building dates to the 18^th century and was the seat of two significant Bordelais families, the Lassalles de Roquefort and the Pontets. Standing at three storeys tall, the windows of the second floor and third floor are variously ornamented with mascarons representing the seasons, volutes and the monogram JLR for the commissioner of the building Jean[-Martin] de Lassalle de Roquefort (d.1737). The present door knocker, which once adorned the front door of the hôtel Lassalle de Roquefort, is not only pictured in Mr Roborel de Climens’ article, but has evidently been of interest to historians of decorative metalwork for some time – it was even illustrated in a 1923 publication on Bordelais ironwork, in the form of a precise drawing.

¹ It has had protected status since 14 September 1965, cadastral reference KN 0261. For the building’s entry on the plateforme ouverte du patrimoine of the French Ministry of Culture, see https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA00083272

² X. Roborel de Climens, ‘A propos de l’hôtel Lassalle de Roquefort à Bordeaux et de ses possesseurs’ , Revue archéologique de Bordeaux, vol. CVI, 2015, pp.119-137.