NEW YORK, NY.- Decorative arts continue to produce superb results with L'Art du Luxe: Masterpieces of French Furniture, totaling $9,762,480, 109 percent hammer and premium above low estimate and 84 percent by lot. This sale took place at an innovative time, during Christie’s Luxury Week, showing the appeal of French design from the court of Versailles to the couturiers of today. Bids came from around the globe including Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, and almost 10 percent of bidders and buyers were new to the category.

The top lot was a late Louis XV Ormolu-Mounted Japanese Lacquer and Ebony Commode, almost certainly supplied to the duchesse de Mazarin for the château de Chilly-Mazarin, which made $819,000. Other leading results included: a jewel-like Louis XV Ormolu-Mounted Bois Satine and Chinese Lacquer Bureau Plat by Joseph Baumhauer, one of only two of its type known to exist, which fetched $604,800; a Late Louis XV Ormolu-Mounted Amaranth, Tulipwood and Parquetry Commode supplied to the court banker Micault d’Harvelay in 1774, which made $693,000; and a rare Pair of Late Louis XV Ormolu and 'Acier Poli' Consoles, which brought $415,000.

Lot 73. A late Louis XV Ormolu-Mounted Japanese Lacquer and Ebony Commode, by Claude-Charles Saunier, circa 1765, the Japanese lacquer 17th century, almost certainly supplied to the duchesse de Mazarin for the château de Chilly- Mazarin ; 93 cm high, 110 cm wide, 55 cm deep. Price realised USD 819,000 (Estimate USD 300,000 – USD 500,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2024.

With a shaped rectangular portor marble top above ten drawers from a 17th-century Japanese lacquer cabinet, their fronts decorated in relief with gilt birds and landscapes, the angles mounted with ormolu paterae and fruiting pendants, the sides decorated with overlapping pictorial lacquer rectangles, on square tapering legs, stamped on the top CC SAUNIER, inscribed on the top B 57 and Hal 1 and on the reverse HAL 53 in black ink.

Provenance : Almost certainly supplied to Louise-Jeanne de Durfort, duchesse de Mazarin (1735-1781) for her bedroom in the château de Chilly-Mazarin, and subsequently described in the catalogue drawn up after her death in 1781 under lot 385 as follows: 'une commode de laque noir, avec des oiseaux de relief en or, composée d'un grand tiroir et de neuf petits, avec entrée de serrure & ornements de cuivre doré, & à dessus de marbre d'Italie'.
Acquired at the sale of her collection held between August 1784 and March 1785 by Sieur Chevalier for 408 livres.
Reputedly subsequently acquired by Jean-Joseph de Laborde.
Alice Halphen, nee Koenigswarter (Mme. Fernand Halphen), Paris.
Confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg from the above and transferred to the Jeu de Paume via the German Embassy in Paris (ERR no. HAL 53), 9 July 1940.
Transferred to the Nazi depot at Neuschwanstein, then shipped to Lager Peter, Alt Aussee, Austria.
Repatriated to France, 19 October 1945 and restituted to Alice Halphen, 15 February 1946.
Georges Halphen, by descent from above.
Acquired from Galerie Kugel, Paris.

Note: Claude-Charles Saunier, maître in 1752.
This striking commode, decorated with refined ormolu mounts, ingeniously incorporates the central drawers and inner structure from a precious seventeenth-century Japanese lacquer cabinet. It is part of a select and luxurious group of commodes featuring Japanese lacquer, which was the most costly and sought-after type of lacquer among enlightened connoisseurs in the eighteenth century. The ingenious and luxurious use of Chinese and Japanese lacquer to decorate pieces of Parisian furniture was the result of the inventiveness of the luxury taste-makers of Paris, the marchands-merciers, who had a monopoly on importing luxury goods such as lacquer and porcelain from Asia and responded with extraordinary imaginativeness to the passion for chinoiserie among collectors throughout the 1700s.

JAPANESE LACQUER COMMODES
Commodes incorporating Japanese cabinets appear as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century and were continuously held in high regard throughout the 1700s. Lacquer cabinets containing numerous drawers concealed by two doors were produced in Asia in the seventeenth century to satisfy the demands of the Western market. Imported from the East Asia, they were immediately coveted by European customers. During the second half of the seventeenth century such cabinets were often used unaltered and placed on elaborate Western stands. It was not until the reign of Louis XV that the marchands-merciers began dismantling cabinets which, with their doors removed, saw their frames containing the original drawers incorporated into western carcases. These new frames were often ebonized and further embellished with japanning and ormolu mounts. The doors of the original cabinets were often used to decorated the sides of these commodes. The marchand Hébert possessed une petite commode de 3 pieds 4 pouces de long garnie de 10 tiroirs de verny de la Chine 120 livres in his shop as early as 1724. On 16 May 1750, Lazare Duvaux delivered to Madame de Pompadour une commode composée de tiroirs d'ancien lacque garnie de bronze doré d'ormolu avec le marbre d'Antin, 864 livres, which is probably the commode subsequently recorded at Saint Ouen in 1764. Likewise, Darnault commissioned BVRB's talents to execute a similar commode which is now in the Louvre (inv. OA 11 745). Finally, in the 1775 inventory following the death of the wife of the prolific marchand Racinel de la Planche, who specialized in lacquer, there is recorded un corps de commode à 10 tiroirs de lacque noir et or, le corps plaqué en ébéne et cannelures avec cadres et anneaux de bronze doré son dessus de marbre portor 360 livres. All of these examples must have paralleled the form of the commode offered here.
BVRB’s commode in the Louvre illustrates the practice of concealing the fact that the drawers were reused, as was common at the time. As the century progressed, the original Asian framework was highlighted to emphasize the exotic nature of the piece, as evidenced by the present commode. The rise of Neoclassicism and the desire to achieve cleaner lines and simpler forms almost necessitated emphasizing the original structure, partially due to the constraints presented by the original Japanese construction. Because the cabinets imported from Japan and China were usually of the same size, measuring at around 40 inches, or 110 centimeters in width, the commodes produced by Parisan ébènistes tend to be of similar size. The most remarkable commodes, all of comparable dimensions, were produced by some of the best-known cabinet-makers of the second half of the eighteenth century, such as Joseph Baumhauer, René Dubois, Etienne Levasseur, Jean-François Leleu, Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer and, as in this case, Claude-Charles Saunier.
Today, only about twenty such commodes are known but due to their similar sizes and decorations, only three can be matched to their original owners with certainty: a pair by Levasseur owned by Pierre Louis-Paul Randon de Boisset, and the present commode from the duchesse de Mazarin. It is primarily the number of drawers that helps differentiate among existing commodes. Other notable eighteenth-century collectors who owned similar commodes include Madame de Pompadour; Louis-Jean Gaignat, secrétaire du Roi; the marchand mercier Jean Rachinel Delaplanche; as well as Randon de Boisset, receveur général des finances de Lyon, whose abovementioned commodes were eventually sold in the twentieth century from the collection of Jaime Ortiz Patiño, Sotheby's, New York, 20 May 1992, lot 85, now in a private collection.
To discover the original owner of the present lot, it is necessary to first identify commodes fitted with ten drawers. One can find about ten such pieces in archival records belonging to a varied group of collectors, including the duc de la Vrillière, ministre de la maison du Roi; Nicolas-Joseph Bergeret de Grancourt; Jean Lemaistre de La Martinière; Harenc de Presle; and the banker Jean-Joseph de Laborde, whose commode by Leleu was seized during the Revolution. Furthermore, a commode with ten drawers attributed to Saunier was delivered in 1791 to the Earl of Spencer by Daguerre, see (F.J.B. Watson, Le Meuble Louis XVI, Paris, 1963, n. 149).

THE MAZARIN PROVENANCE
The present commode was almost certainly supplied to Louise-Jeanne de Durfort de Duras, duchesse de Mazarin and was recorded in her bedroom at the château de Chilly-Mazarin in 1781. The duchesse died in Paris on 17 March 1781 and her home on the quai Malaquais was immediately sealed as she had amassed large debts. An inventory of her château was carried out 9-18 June 1781. Joseph-Alexandre Lebrun, responsible for assessing the precious objects and furniture that were to be auctioned, estimated the ten-drawer lacquer commode in the bedroom at 240 livres. It was offered at public auction on 10 December 1781 as lot 358: une commode de laque noir, avec des oiseaux de relief en or, composée d'un grand tiroir et de neuf petits, avec entrée de serrure & ornements de cuivre doré, & à dessus de marbre d'Italie. The present commode and the duchesse's other possessions from Chilly were not, however, sold until some years later, due to the objections of the her numerous creditors. When the estate was finally sold, between August 1784 and March 1785, the commode was purchased by a Sieur Chevalier, probably an agent who was bidding on behalf of a client, for 408 livres. The Mazarin commode then entered the collection of the abovementioned Jean-Joseph de Laborde (see L'Estampille, l'Objet d'Art, September 1989, no. 228 pp. 66-75). Although the 1781 lot description of the commode from Mazarin’s bedroom lacks dimensions and is somewhat vague, we can be almost certain that it denotes our lot as it is noted to feature birds executed in high relief gold lacquer: avec des oiseaux de relief en or, a unique feature among the known ten-drawer commodes of this type. Additionally, the description also specifies a marbre d'Italie top, which could refer to the Portor marble on this lot. The duchesse de Mazarin's taste for sumptuous pieces in Japanese lacquer is well documented, including a commode and pair of encoignures supplied by Joseph for her Parisian hôtel (now in the British Royal collection), and the exquisite table comprising lot 89 in this sale. Such a taste for Japanese lacquer was no doubt influenced by the fabled Mazarin lacquer coffer, which had been supplied to her family in the seventeenth century, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc. no. 412:1,2-1882).

THE DUCHESSE DE MAZARIN
Louise-Jeanne de Durfort, duchesse de Mazarin et de la Meilleraye (1735-1781) was the daughter of the politician and diplomat Emmanuel-Félicité de Durfort (1715-1789) and Charlotte Antoinette de la Porte-Mazarin (1719-1735). In 1747 she married Louis-Marie, duc d'Aumont (1732-1799). Their daughter, Louise d'Aumont (1759-1826), became a Princess of Monaco upon her marriage in 1777 to Jacques François Honoré IV of the Grimaldi family. The duchesse’s main residences were her Parisian hôtel on the quai Malaquais, demolished in the nineteenth century and currently the site of the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and the château de Chilly-Mazarin, southwest of Paris, sold by Louise d’Aumont in 1804. In 1774 the duchesse enlisted the services of François-Joseph Bélanger to redecorate her Parisian home, which was to be outfitted in the most up-to-date 'Antique' style. Due to his duties to the comte d’Artois, Bélanger delegated the work to François-Thérèse Chalgrin. An avid collector and patron of the arts, the duchesse de Mazarin spent liberally, often beyond her means, to furnish her homes and o enrich her collection with the most precious and fashionable objects available. She commissioned pieces from the best craftsmen of her time, including Pierre Gouthière, whose world-renowned ormolu and bleu turquin marble suite was destined for the duchesse’s salon. The famous console table from this suite is at the Frick Collection (acc. no. 15.5.59), and a pair of pedestals were recently sold Christie’s, Paris, 21 November 2023, lot 20 (€1,492,200). Her new fashionable hôtel provided the perfect setting for numerous parties and balls, which further drained the Mazarin coffers. As mentioned above, the duchesse’s financials were in a dire state at the time of her death when she owed Gouthière alone over 100,000 livres. Upon her death, the Mazarin family became extinct, as an edict of 1711 stated that the Mazarin title could only be passed down through male descendants of the original grantee.

SUBSEQUENT PROVENANCE
The nineteenth-century history of this commode is unknown, until it entered the collection of Georges Léopold Halphen and his wife, née Henriette-Antonia Stern, in the late 1800s. During the Second World War the commode, which was now the property of their grandson, Georges Jules Samuel Halphen, was seized by the Germans along with the rest of the Halphen collection. The HAL mark (for Halphen), present on the back of this lot, was applied under the German occupation. After the War, the collection was returned and this commode remained in the Halphen family until the end of the twentieth century.

Lot 62. A Louis XV Ormolu-Mounted Tulipwood  and Chinese Lacquer Bureau Plat by Joseph Baumhauer, known as Joseph, almost certainly commissioned by Simon-Philippe Poirier, circa 1760, the Japanese lacquer panels 17th century ; 72.5 cm high, 113 cm wide, 57.5 cm deep. Price realised USD 604,800 (Estimate USD 600,000 – USD 1,000,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2024.

Provenance: With Etienne Levy, Paris.
Pierre Jourdan-Barry (1926-2016).
Acquired from Galerie Kugel, Paris.

Literature: A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, p. 245.
A. Boutémy, 'Joseph', Connaissance des Arts, no. 157, March 1965, pp. 83-89.

Exhibited: Paris, Sotheby's Galerie Charpentier, Trésors des collections privées: Les chefs-d'oeuvre du mobilier français, 7-15 March 1998.

Note: A masterpiece by Joseph Baumhauer, this superb bureau was executed at a moment of perfection in the decorative arts in France. Its harmonious proportions and balance of outline, scale and decoration demonstrate Joseph’s consummate skill, placing him firmly in the canon of the greatest ébenistes of the Ancien Régime. Only one other example of this specific form by Joseph, combining surrounds of lustrous tulipwood with precious panels of Japanese lacquer set into delicate ormolu frames is recorded, that sold from the legendary collection of Djahanguir Riahi; Christie’s, London, 6 December 2012, lot 30 (£1,721,250).

JOSEPH BAUMHAUER
French ébénisterie was greatly influenced by the arrival of hundreds of highly skilled emigrant cabinetmakers, who introduced various ingenious techniques for construction and marquetry. During the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, many of these, including Pierre Gôle, André-Charles Boulle and Bernard van Risenburgh, hailed from the Northern and Southern Netherlands. The second half of the eighteenth century would see many German craftsmen arriving in the French capital, including the Royal cabinetmakers Jean-François Oeben and Jean-Henri Riesener. Joseph Baumhauer, generally known as Joseph, was one of the first German cabinetmakers to arrive in Paris, probably well before 1745, the date of his marriage. He had been granted special status and did not become maître but was made ébéniste privilégié du Roi around 1749, just as Jean-Pierre Latz had been ten years previously. This special position provided various tax advantages and permitted the practice of multiple trades in one workshop (J.-D. Augarde, 'Joseph Baumhauer, ébéniste privilegié du Roi', L'Estampille-L'Objet d'Art', June 1987, no. 204, pp. 15-16.).

Joseph worked almost exclusively for the marchands-merciers, innovative dealers of furniture and bronzes d'ameublement, most notably for Lazare Duvaux, Charles Darnault and Simon-Philippe Poirier, for whom he produced richly-decorated and luxurious pieces decorated in marquetry, lacquer, pietra dura and Sèvres porcelain. During the first part of his career he worked largely for Duvaux, and some of Joseph's pieces can be identified in Duvaux's Livre-Journal, compiled between 1749 and 1758, including the unique pupitre à écrire debout purchased by Karl, Count of Cobenzl (d. 1770) in 1758, sold from the renowned collection of Hubert de Givenchy, Christie's Monaco, 4 December 1993, lot 84 (R. Baarsen, 'Ebénisterie at the court of Charles de Lorraine', The Burlington Magazine, February, 2005, vol. CXLVII, p. 92). With its symmetrical Rococo mounts and balanced harmonious proportions, this beautiful cabinet-cum-writing desk is one of the earliest pieces in his distinctive rocaille assagie style, a more restrained Rococo or Transitional style, which he would perfect in the next decade. He was one of only a few cabinetmakers able to execute masterpieces in various different styles simultaneously. It is, for instance, intriguing that just before commencing work on the Cobenzl pupitre, Joseph had completed his most celebrated and daring piece: the great bureau plat for Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully, produced around 1754-1756 and now at château de Chantilly (S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, figs. 85-89). This monumental and extremely rectilinear piece in ebony, richly mounted in gilt-bronze, is the earliest known piece in the experimental goût grec style, and could not be further removed from the light and colourful marquetry pupitre purchased by Cobenzl from Duvaux.

LACQUER FURNITURE BY JOSEPH
Of the precious materials employed by Joseph on his most luxurious and costly pieces, among the most celebrated is Japanese lacquer or 'Vieux Lacq'. Lacquer furniture generally incorporated specimens removed from antique imported coffers and screens and then supplied to a cabinetmaker by a marchand-mercier, and the art of adapting these components to domestic furniture was one of Joseph's principal specialties. Among his most accomplished Japanese lacquer pieces conceived at the outset of his career, and already fully demonstrating his genius, is a Rococo commode executed circa 1750-1755 for the marchand-mercier François-Charles Darnault, now preserved in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (obj. no. 55.DA.2).

The Riahi bureau is one of the small group of bureaux executed by Joseph from circa 1760 until his death in 1772. Its compact and delicately sinuous model was undoubtedly conceived by Simon-Philippe Poirier, for whom Joseph largely worked in the latter part of his career. Several examples are embellished with Sèvres porcelain plaques, a specialty of Poirier's output which he employed until his retirement in 1777, after which its use was continued with the same vigor by his successor, Dominique Daguerre. The earliest bureau of this type is probably that at preserved at Waddesdon Manor, which incorporates Sèvres plaques bearing factory date letters, the earliest specifying manufacture in 1760 (acc. no. 2335). Five other examples decorated with Sèvres porcelain plaques are known, their plaques dating up to 1770, including one in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry at Boughton House, which is closest to the Waddesdon example. Another, one of its porcelain plaques bearing the painter's mark of Charles-Louis Méraud the Younger and the date letter K for 1763, was sold from the Jean Rossignol Collection, hôtel Dassault, Paris, 13 December 2005, lot 122 (€6,874,575). Interestingly, the shape of the plaques to these two bureaux corresponds to those which adorn the Mlle. de Sens commode by BVRB; the clever ways by which the borders of Joseph’s bureau conceal its irregular shape illustrat the ingenuity and adaptation skills of the marchands-merciers in general, and Poirier in particular.

Besides the Riahi bureau, the only other bureau by Joseph incorporating Japanese lacquer is the example in the Grog-Carven bequest in the Louvre Museum, with an ebony, rather than tulipwood surround to the lacquer panels (inv. no. OA 10453). As with the examples embellished with Sèvres porcelain plaques, the lacquer elements were also almost certainly supplied by Poirier, who had a quasi monopoly on furniture mounted with precious materials in these years. The lacquer bureaux are embellished with most of the same mounts also used to border the porcelain plaques, some of which are exclusive to Joseph's furniture. Poirier clearly selected the mounts to follow and accentuate not only the complex sinuous shape of the top, frieze and legs, but also to expertly border the lacquer panels. The long framing mounts are gently molded and feature small clasps; those to the corners consist of long sweeping acanthus centered by trails; to the legs, Joseph applied a flat tapering mount exclusive to his work. On the 'Sèvres' bureaux, the mounts surrounding the plaques are more sturdy, as necessitated by the weight and fragility of the porcelain material. The mounts around the lacquer panels, by contrast, are far lighter, resulting in an even more harmonious chef d'oeuvre.

THE JOURDAN-BARRY COLLECTION
The Jourdan-Barry collection was assembled over more than a century through three generations, by Mafalda Jourdan (1862-1934), her son Raymond Jourdan Barry (1891-1968) (author of a landmark study of Provençal silver), and grandson Pierre (1926-2016). The collection was most celebrated for a superb collection of French silver which was memorialized in a study published by Galerie Kugel, and some of which was dispersed in landmark sales in 1992 and 2012 and in a special exhibition at Kugel. They also collected deeply and widely in French faïence, particularly from Moustiers and Marseille (where the family originated), as well as portrait miniatures, paintings, sculpture and Islamic art. Their collection of Moustiers faïence was ultimately donated to the Musée de Sèvres and then transferred to the city museum in Moustiers, while Pierre donated works to the Louvre, including an important fifteenth-century French sculpture of the Pietà.

Lot 81. A Late Louis XV Ormolu-Mounted Amaranth, Tulipwood and Parquetry Commode, by Jean-François Leleu, delivered on 3 February 1774, supplied to the court banker Micault d’Harvelay in 1774 ; 90 cm high, 81.5 cm wide, 50 cm deep. Price realised USD 604,800 (Estimate USD 600,000 – USD 1,000,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2024.

Provenance: Delivered by Jean-François Leleu to the banker Joseph Micault d'Harvelay (1723-1786), 3 February 1774, for his hôtel on the rue d'Artois.
Almost certainly the commode listed in 1786 (in an inventory taken following the death of Micault d'Harvelay) in the chambre à coucher of Madame d'Harvelay.
Acquired from Kraemer, Paris.

Lot 62. A rare Pair of Late Louis XV Ormolu and 'Acier Poli' Consoles, circa 1765-1770, the design attributed to Victor Louis and Jean Louis Prieur, the metalwork attributed to Pierre II Deumier, the ormolu attributed to Pierre Gouthiere; 28 cm high, 90.5 cm wide, 29.5 cm deep. Price realised USD 418,500 (Estimate USD 200,000 – USD 300,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2024.

Each of demilune form with a verde antico marble top above a rosette-filled entrelac frieze, suspending ribbon-tied berried laurel festoons.

Provenance: Acquired from Perrin, Paris.

Note: Conceived in costly polished steel and gilt-bronze and with an audacious goût à la grecque design, these superb console tables are an exciting discovery, adding to a small group of related examples produced circa 1765, including the celebrated console supplied to King Augustus III of Poland. Although recent analysis has revealed that in strict metallurgical terms these are more likely to be of polished wrought-iron than polished steel, the terms 'acier poli' and 'fer poli' were almost interchangeable in the eighteenth century and this group has traditionally been described as polished steel, which is how the material will be referred to in this entry. Polished steel was an extremely hard and complex material to work, and furniture made of this material was subsequently very expensive. These costly pieces were conceived by serruriers (locksmiths) working outside their usual skill and scale, and were considered a profound innovation. David Harris Cohen, who studied a similar model now at the J.P. Getty Museum, Los Angeles, was the first to identify a group of consoles of this type, which he attributed to the work of the serrurier Pierre II Deumier, based on Deumier's advertisement published in the gazette of L’Avant-coureur, 8 August 1763:

‘Un pied pour porter une table de marbre à double consolles avec volutes en cornes de bélier, enrichie d’avant corps & moulures prises, sur les masses, surmontées d’une frise avec rond entrelassé & rosettes. Le bas est terminé par un vase antique de ronde bosse avec branches de chêne. Les consolles sont garnies de différentes pièces d’ornements, & dans le milieu est une tête de femme coëffée à l’antique ; des branches de laurier forment guirlande au pourtour’.

In his study, Cohen identified two groups of steel examples, the first dating from the eighteenth century and the second made in silvered bronze, dating from the nineteenth century. The consoles offered here, unique in design within the group, are an exciting addition to a very small corpus of eighteenth-century examples in polished steel, all following the same general striking avant-garde Neoclassical design, attributed to the architect Victor Louis (1731-1800):

- a single console at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no. Epr-2736), which is 140 cm. wide. Its design corresponds to two drawings, one by Victor Louis, the other attributed to the ornemaniste and sculptor Jean-Louis Prieur (1759-1795), made in 1766 for the Chambre des Portraits of the Royal palace of Warsaw. The only difference between the Hermitage example and the 1766 designs is the absence of the cypher of its patron, King Stanislaw II Augustus (1732-1798)

- a single console at Marble House, Newport, Rhode Island. It was donated, together with a later console of this model, to the Newport Preservation Society after its purchase in 1957 by Harold S. Vanderbilt from the New York dealers French & Company. The eighteenth-century example has a leaf-and-berry mount at the center of its frieze, similar to the Hermitage table

- a pair of consoles sold from the Rothschild Collection, by family tradition acquired by Baron Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911) from Galerie Seligmann at the end of the nineteenth century (sold Christie's, London, 4 July 2019, lot 30, £2,831,350), their friezes centered by later female masks

We also know seven other examples which are in silvered bronze, which are now thought to date from the second half of the nineteenth century:

- a single console in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu (acc. no. 88.DF.118), 129.5 cm wide; formerly in the Lopez-Willshaw collection, sold Sotheby’s, Monaco, 23 June 1976, lot 108; subsequently acquired from the British Rail Pension Fund.

- a pair of consoles at the château de Versailles, bequeathed by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan (137 cm. wide); according to Cohen, this pair is not eighteenth-century but of later manufacture and in silvered bronze (one has been subsequently gilded)

- a pair of consoles at the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris (inv. no. CAM.190.1-2, 127 cm. wide). This pair, centered by cartouches, was formerly in the collection of marquis Edmond de Lambertye, and was purchased by Camondo in 1917 from the dealer Jacques Seligmann

- the second console now on display at Marble House, its frieze centered by three fleurs-de-lys. Theodore Dell has stated that this console is silvered bronze, and not eighteenth-century

- a further single console in a private American collection, possibly that fabricated by Wertheimer of Bond Street and recorded in the 1862 International Exhibition

THE KING OF POLAND’S CONSOLE
King Augustus II of Poland died on 5 October 1763. As the Polish throne was not hereditary, the election of a new king had the potential to change the balance of power in Europe. After eleven months of intrigue throughout the courts of Europe, Stanislas Auguste II Poniatowski was elected. As a demonstration of his new power and status, the new King decided to extensively redesign the palace in Warsaw in the latest ‘goût grec’ fashion. For this project, he sought the advice from Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777), his influential friend and patron, whose salon on the rue Saint-Honoré played an important role in setting the avant-garde literary and artistic tone in Paris. His relationship with Madame Geoffrin began during his 1741 trip in Paris, and continued in an important and lengthy correspondence that would continue to influence his decisions on artistic matters, even after he became King. Through her, he became acquainted with her protégé, the designer and architect Victor Louis, and Madame Geoffrin granted herself the responsibility of the overall design of the remodeling of the Royal Palace in 1763.

A watercolor by Victor Louis of the window wall of the Palace’s ‘chambre des portraits’, dated 1766, shows a console of this model placed under two windows. Another drawing, more detailed and attributed to Jean-Louis Prieur, is in the Warsaw University, and shows the console in elevation and plan. A third drawing, more schematic, shows it in elevation only. For the execution of the console, it is known that a life-size model was made in Paris by a craftsman called ‘Jadot’. The table itself was completed and delivered to Warsaw by February 1769, by which date the bleu turquin marble top and oval stand shown in the two drawings had been supplied by Jacques Adam. The console was apparently never used in any of the interiors, though it remained part of the Royal collections until at least 1795, when it was described in storage in the ‘Inventaire des Effets mobiliers dans le Garde-Meuble au château de Varsovie qui sont à vendre.’ It also appears in the 1789 inventory after the death of Stanislas. It has been assumed that the console was brought to Russia sometime in the nineteenth century during the occupation of Poland, and would be the example now at the State Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg.

Madame Geoffrin appears to have been a key figure for this commission, not only introducing Victor Louis to the King but also Deumier, as she herself employed his services before 1766 for the refurnishing of her hôtel on the rue Saint-Honoré. In her carnets, entitled ‘Différentes choses dont je veux garder le souvenir et de différentes choses dont je veux me souvenir des prix’ is recorded: ‘Les deux consoles d’acier et de bronze doré de ma chambre à coucher … 1,500 L' together with ‘les marbres de Portor, 96L’. Further down she records ‘les deux encoignures de ma chambre à coucher, le marbre de Portor, 96L ‘. This pair of encoignures, undoubtedly by Deumier, are also recorded in the 1833 posthumous inventory death of the marquis d’Estampes (her daughter’s heir) and are mentioned as follows: ‘N°178. Deux encoignures en fer ciselé à garnitures de bronze doré et dessus de marbre portor, 50F’ (Arch. nat. MCN. CX/853).

THE BERINGHEN SUITE OF 'ACIER POLI' CONSOLES
A large set of ormolu-mounted steel furniture is recorded in the eighteenth century in the collection of the marquis de Beringhen, premier écuyer du roi, dit ‘Monsieur le Premier’ (1693-1770). His posthumous collection sale after death lists no fewer than six consoles and two encoignures, although none would equate with the distinctive small scale and wall-mounted form (possibly designed to be incorporated into a specific architectural scheme) of the consoles offered here:

N°176. Deux tables de beau marbre brèche d’Alep, de forme contournées, portant chacune dans sa plus grande partie 4 pieds sur 19 pouces 6 lignes de profondeur, posées sur des pieds à deux consoles de 21 pouces [130 x 52,5 x 56,7 cm.], en acier bruni, ornées de feuilles, fleurons guirlandes, coquilles & moulures de bronze doré, le tout exécuté avec beaucoup d’art & de perfection. [135 x 48,5 cm.]

N°177. Une table aussi de marbre brèche d’Alep, sur un pied pareil au précédent. [135 x 48,5cm.]

N°178. Une table de très beau marbre vert campan, de forme contournée, sur son pied, qui ne diffère des précédents que par sa richesse [no measurements]

N°179. Une autre table de même marbre de 4 pieds 9 pouces, sur 22 pouces 6 lignes [154 x 61 cm.], sur un pied d’acier poli, garni de bronze doré beaucoup plus travaillé que celui de l’article précédent.

N°180. Une table de marbre de belle brocatelle de 3 pieds 3 pouces [105 cm.], aussi sur son pied d’acier poli, orné de bronze doré.

N°181. Deux petites encoignures de même marbre, sur des pieds d’acier.