An important gilt-bronze mounted ebony, steel, and Japanese lacquer dressing table by Paul Sormani, Paris circa 1870

with a pierced three-quarter galleried top with a central Japanese lacquer panel, lifting to reveal a beveled mirror, originally flanked by two further panels of lacquer with naturalistic decor, the paneled frieze drawer released by a catch and centered by a female mask roundel and flanked with female sphinxes among scrolling foliage, on a steel ground flanked by two short drawers applied with ribbon-tied fruiting and floral garlands, on female caryatid supports joined by a shaped, pierced stretcher centered by a basket on spirally twisted tapering legs, stamped P. SORMANI PARIS.  Losses to lacquer.

Comparative literature: Daniel Alcouffe, Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Vol. I, Dijon, 1993, p. 289, no 97.

This table is directly copied from an original model by Adam Weisweiler (1744-1820) supplied by him to the marchand-mercier Daguerre in 1784 for Marie-Antoinette's cabinet intérieur at the Château de Saint-Cloud.  This table was copied by various 19^th century makers faithfully reproducing the finesse of the gilt-bronzes.  Empress Eugénie in 1865 acquired the original table from the Prince de Beauvau (d. 1864) and placed it in the salon bleu in the Tuileries where she gave audiences.  The table is now in the Musée du Louvre and illustrated by D. Alcouffe, op. cit., p. 289, no. 97.  The mounts on the original table were chased and gilded by the doreur François Rémond.

A related 19^th century version of this table, by Alfred Beurdeley, with slight variations in the laquer panels and interior was sold at Christie's, London, October 29, 1998,  lot 151 (£60,000).  Another, by the same cabinetmaker, sold Sotheby's, London, June 8, 2005, lot 77 (£96,000).