A pair of French gilt-bronze mounted kingwood and parquetry side cabinets by Hippolyte-Edmé Pretot circa 1850

each of serpentine outline, with a molded white marble top above a guilloche frieze above a cupboard door, each centered with a silvered bronze médaillon of Venus and Cupid after Clodion, flanked by female term figures, the sides with marquetry ovals of floral sprays, on scrolled feet, the carcass stamped Pretot.

Sold, Sotheby's, London, October 6, 1995, lot 208

Cabinets by Pretot illustrated in Denise Ledoux-Lebard, Les Ebénistes Français du XIX Siècle, Paris, 1984, pages 531 and 532

Hyppolite-Edmé Pretot (1812-1855) was born in Paris and was established at 16, rue de L' abbaye in 1836, 11, bis, rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1841 and from 1846 at 3 & 5 rue de Harlay.  He exhibited at the Exposition Nationale in 1849 and at the 1851 London exhibition where he obtained a second class medal for a collection of stone encrusted furniture.

The silvered bronze médaillon are in the manner of Clodion and are based on a terracotta médaillon which was part of a relief in La cour d' honneur of the hotel de Bourbon-Condé and executed by him around 1781.  The original médaillons are illustrated in the Musée du Louvre Catalogue, 17th March-29th June 1992 - Clodion, 1738-1814, p. 214, fig. 120.