a gilt-bronze mounted kingwood and satine bureau plat after the model attributed to ANDRÉ-CHARLES BOULLE, by Joseph-Emmanuel Zwiener Paris, circa 1885

gilt-tooled brown leather surface, each corner with a satyr mask clasp, three frieze drawers with dolphin-cast handles, the reverse with similarly decorated faux drawers, stamped E. ZWIENER on the top of the left side drawer.

This bureau plat with its recessed central drawer and female mask corner mounts is based upon a series of celebrated bureaux plats with female masks produced around 1715-20 in the workshop of the most celebrated French ébéniste of the Louis XIV period, André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732). They were usually in tortoiseshell and brass marquetry, however, 18^th century examples are also recorded in amaranth and ebony. Boulle also produced models with satyr masks as chutes. Similar desks are in the Wallace Collection in London, the Getty Museum in California, the Frick Collection in New York, and the celebrated model comissioned for the Duc de Bourbon is now in the permanent collection at the Chateau de Versailles.