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Antique Pair French Marquetry Cabinets Wardrobes

$15,847.84List Price

About the Item

This is a stunning pair of antique French ebonised and marquetry cabinets, dating from the early 20th century. They have wonderful ormolu mounts, exquisite marquetry decoration and are surmounted with beautiful specimen marble plaques. Each cabinet has an amazing pair of marquetry doors, each door has three panels and each central panel has an elaborate marquetry of flowers, birds and butterflies, whereas the other panels have exquisite inlaid decoration. The sides of the cabinets are ebonised and have panels of floral marquetry with parrots and butterflies on a rosewood background. The inside of the doors have fabulous coromandel borders with panels of musical instrument and floral marquetry, on rosewood and burr walnut backgrounds. The interior is of coromandel and rosewood, and each cabinet has four shelves to display or store books, files etc, these can easily be removed if you wish to use the cabinet s as wardrobes. Around the cornice of each cabinet there are thirteen ormolu panels each displaying a different type of marble. They are complete with working locks and keys. This delicious pair cabinets are an outstanding example of craftsmanship and could serve any purpose. A truly gorgeous pair, they deserve pride of place in any furniture collection. Condition: In excellent condition having been beautifully restored in our workshops, please see photos for confirmation. Dimensions in cm: Height 216 x Width 126 x Depth 58 Dimensions in inches: Height 85.0 x Width 49.6 x Depth 22.8 Marquetry is decorative artistry where pieces of material (such as wood, mother of pearl, pewter, brass silver or shell) of different colours are inserted into surface wood veneer to form intricate patterns such as scrolls or flowers. The technique of veneered marquetry had its inspiration in 16th century Florence. Marquetry elaborated upon Florentine techniques of inlaying solid marble slabs with designs formed of fitted marbles, jaspers and semi-precious stones. This work, called opere di commessi, has medieval parallels in Central Italian "Cosmati"-work of inlaid marble floors, altars and columns. The technique is known in English as pietra dura, for the "hardstones" used: onyx, jasper, cornelian, lapis lazuli and colored marbles. In Florence, the Chapel of the Medici at San Lorenzo is completely covered in a colored marble facing using this demanding jig-sawn technique. Techniques of wood marquetry were developed in Antwerp and other Flemish centers of luxury cabinet-making during the early 16th century. The craft was imported full-blown to France after the mid-seventeenth century, to create furniture of unprecedented luxury being made at the royal manufactory of the Gobelins, charged with providing furnishings to decorate Versailles and the other royal residences of Louis XIV. Early masters of French marquetry were the Fleming Pierre Golle and his son-in-law, André-Charles Boulle, who founded a dynasty of royal and Parisian cabinet-makers (ébénistes) and gave his name to a technique of marquetry employing tortoiseshell and brass with pewter in arabesque or intricately foliate designs. Ormolu - (from French 'or moulu', signifying ground or pounded gold) is an 18th-century English term for applying finely ground, high-carat gold in a mercury amalgam to an object of bronze.The mercury is driven off in a kiln leaving behind a gold-coloured veneer known as 'gilt bronze'. The manufacture of true ormolu employs a process known as mercury-gilding or fire-gilding, in which a solution of nitrate of mercury is applied to a piece of copper, brass, or bronze, followed by the application of an amalgam of gold and mercury. The item was then exposed to extreme heat until the mercury burned off and the gold remained, adhered to the metal object. No true ormolu was produced in France after around 1830 because legislation had outlawed the use of mercury. Therefore, other techniques were used instead but nothing surpasses the original mercury-firing ormolu method for sheer beauty and richness of colour. Electroplating is the most common modern technique. Ormolu techniques are essentially the same as those used on silver, to produce silver-gilt (also known as vermeil). Coromandel wood or Calamander wood is a valuable wood from India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. It is of a hazel-brown color, with black stripes (or the other way about), very heavy and hard. It is also known as Macassar Ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from different species in the same genus; one of these is Diospyros quaesita Thwaites, from Sri Lanka. The name Calamander comes from the local sinhalese name, 'kalu-medhiriya', which means dark chamber; referring to the characteristic ebony black wood. Coromandel wood has been logged to extinction over the last 2 to 3 hundred years and is no longer available for new work in any quantity. Furniture in coromandel is so expensive and so well looked after that even recycling it is an unlikely source. A substitute, Macassar Ebony, has similar characteristics and to the untrained eye is nearly the same but it lacks the depth of colour seen in genuine Coromandel. Rosewood is a rich warm reddish brown wood that has a distinct grain with dark brown and black outlining. One variety of Rosewood can vary significantly from another even though it is of the same species. These Rosewoods, native of India, South East Asia and Brazil, were dense and awkward to work with. It was renowned for quickly bluntening cutting tools and visibly darkening in colour when over prepared. The Brazilian species of Rosewood was by far the most beautifully figured and therefore it became the most sought after and rare. This was the wood of choice for the great box makers, David and Thomas Edwards who used it to veneer some of their finest pieces.

Sold As:
Set of 2
Place of Origin:
France
Period:
Early 20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
circa 1910
Condition:
Seller Location:
London, GB
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU95061280146

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