A fine and rare Louis XVI ormolu-mounted bois satiné and amaranth marquetry table à écrire circa 1772, stamped I.F. Leleu

the rectangular top inset with a leather writing surface and surrounded by an ormolu border, the frieze with one drawer at the front and one at the side, veneered all around with entrelacs enclosing rosettes within ormolu leaf tip borders, the slightly outset corners mounted with berried leaf clusters and the lower part of the frieze outlined with a molded ormolu border, raised on tapered legs headed by acanthus leaf capitals, inset with ormolu flutes and ending in leaf-cast ormolu feet.

Collection of M. & Mme. H. Forster, Belgium, sold, Sotheby’s, Monaco, December 9, 1984, lot 1054

Alexandre Pradère, Les ébénistes Français de Louis XIV à la révolution, Paris, 1989, illustrated p. 335, fig. 390.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS LELEU (1729-1807)

Leleu was born in Paris and received his early training as an apprentice in the workshop of Jean-François Oeben.  Poised to take over Oeben’s workshop on the latter’s premature death in 1763, he was supplanted by his younger colleague, Jean-Henri Riesener, who would later marry Oeben’s widow.

Leleu received his maîtrise in 1764 and settled in the Chaussée de la Contrescarpe in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.  He later moved to the street now known as the Rue Birague near the Places des Vosges.

Leleu’s clientèle included notable pioneers of the neo-classical style, among them Madame du Barry who, although more of a fashion follower than a trend-setter, nevertheless had a notable collection of highly innovative neo-classical furniture.  Leleu provided a number of pieces of case furniture for the baron d’Ivry at the château d’Henonville which had been modernized by the architect Nicolas Barré.  Barré also designed the château du Marais for which Leleu also provided important furniture, as well as for the Marquis de Laborde and the château de Méréville.  What emerges is a pattern of newly-built or modernized residences which were owned by fashionable and discerning patrons who turned to Leleu for some of their most innovative ‘modern’ furniture, executed in his inimical architectural style.

The present table is closely comparable with the furniture which Leleu provided for Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé at the Palais Bourbon.  His commissions were executed between April 1772 and June 1776 for furniture worth over 40,000 livres.  This included two secrétaires à abattant, two bureaux à cylindre, seven commodes, two writing desks, twenty-seven games tables and eleven screens of various kinds; he also provided a marquetry floor (Svend Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, London, 1974, p. 201). All of the furniture was in the most advanced taste and although the Prince de Condé did not take up residence for a number of years, his initiative, along with that of other discerning connoisseurs, such as the duc de Choiseul and the duc d’Uzès,  more than likely firmly established this new style amongst Parisian craftsmen (Eriksen, op.cit., p. 120).

The table described below, delivered for the Palais Bourbon in 1773, closely corresponds to the present lot:  

Du 24 dudit (mai 1773)

“avoir fourni un bureau de 2 pieds 8 pouces de long, sur 18 pouces de large et 27 pouces ½ de haut, à deux tiroirs, garnis en mohere desoye, et gallons d’or à ferrés de leurs serrures en cuivre, et la clef.  Le dit bureau plaque en bois d’amarante, filets noirs et blancs.  Dans la frize un entrelas et rosaces nuances, les pieds ronds cannelés en cuivre lisse, ornés de quatre sabots, quatre astragalles, quatre fleurs de lys repercées à jour, deux moulures unies, un carderon, quatre cadres à feuilles, le tout bien fini et doré d’or moulu, le dessus garny en velours vert pour ce …….780 livres”

The present table can be compared with a commode, one of a pair which Leleu delivered in May 1773 for the Duchesse de Bourbon’s bedroom, fitted with identical fluted legs with acanthus leaf capitals.

Leleu produced furniture with exceptional marquetry panels the quality of which was only rivaled by his rival, J.H. Riesener.  The frieze of entrelacs enclosing rosettes on the present table is a device used often by Leleu and appears on a bureau plat, formerly in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Deane Johnson, sold, Christie’s, New York, October 23, 1998, lot 176.  An almost identical marquetry frieze is on a small secrétaire now in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, illustrated, P. Kjellberg, Le Mobilier Français du XVIII Siècle, Paris, 2002, p. 555, fig. B.