A fine and rare Austrian neoclassical gilt-bronze and gilt-copper Boulle marquetry center table circa 1830, incorporating early 18th century elements, Vienna or Augsburg

the rectangular top with a leather writing surface within an inlaid border, the frieze with one drawer flanked by false drawer fronts, fitted all around with elaborate scrolling ormolu mounts  in the form of tasselled drapery, raised on shaped trestle supports with scrolled cornels with ormolu finials, the shaped stretcher centered by the monogram CF; the whole outlined by auricular ormolu mounts cast with foliate motifs and inlaid in engraved brass, copper and mother-of-pearl on grounds of brown tortoiseshell forming motifs in the manner of Berain including griffin, female terms, birds, baskets of fruit and flowers.  Restorations.

Blairman & Sons, London

Jean-Louis Picard, Paris, 1994

Galerie Aveline, Paris

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, June 10, 1998, lot 11.

Sara Medlam, Western Furniture 1350 to the Present Day in the Victoria & Albert Museum, Ed. C. Wilk, London, 1996, illustrated p. 82, fig. 2.  Compare also fig. 1.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Geoffrey de Bellaigue, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Fribourg, 1974, Vol. II, nos. 114 and 115, pp. 550-551.

The present table can be compared with a cabinet in the Victoria and Albert Museum, dated MDCCXV (1715).  This cabinet was modified c. 1735, and it bears the arms of Johann Franz Anton Khevenhuller, Bishop of Wiener-Neustadt (1734-1741); for a discussion of this cabinet, see, Sara Medlam, op. cit.

The auricular mounts outlining the present table are identical to those on the feet of the V&A cabinet and appear to date from the early 18th century.  The tasselled drapery mounts are similar to the mounts flanking the coat-of-arms on the cabinet, but are of later date and were most likely cast when the table was reconstructed. 

The marquetry on the legs and stretcher of the present table is of a quality and finesse which would suggest that it is of early 18th century execution, and it is closely comparable with the veneers on the V&A cabinet.  The marquetry on the frieze appears to have come from another source to be re-used on the present table; the marquetry on the top is almost certainly of later date. 

It has been suggested that the source for the design of the marquetry on the V&A cabinet  may be engraved designs by Paul Decker (1677-1713) published in Augsburg and Nuremberg in the early 18th century.