w - A WORK TABLE 'GLOBUS NÄHTISCHEN' VIENNA, CIRCA 1835

mahogany, ebonised banding, bone and gilt-bronze mounted, the globe shaped body with an ebonised equator, enclosing a fitted interior, on outward curved splayed legs surmounted by female terms and with claw endings, joined by a galleried undertier, on a concave sided tripartite base

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

G. Himmelheber, Biedermeier Möbel, London 1973, ill. 13.
M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, London 1965, p. 71.
H. Kreisel, Die Kunst des Deutschen Möbels, München 1986, p. 95 and ill. IV.

CATALOGUE NOTE

These globe-shaped worktables with interpenetrating hemi-spheres and fitted interior illustrate a very high degree of mastery and are extremely rare. Frederich Paulick executed a design for a similar table in Carl Schmidt's drawing school in Vienna, circa 1825, which is illustrated in H. Ottomeyer, Zopf- und Biedermeier Möbel. Katalog der Möbelsammlung des Münchner Stadtmuseums, München 1991, p. 17, ill. 8. Interestingly, these treasures of the Austrian Biedermeier era derive from the patented 1806 designs for globe writing tables by the London cabinet-maker George Remington, which were subsequently produced by the celebrated firm of Morgan & Sanders.
Several examples are also illustrated by Prof. Rainer Haaf in Das Süddeutsche Biedermeier, Hamburg 1991, p. 293, ill. 616-619.

Related tables were sold in: Sotheby's New Bond Street, 8 December 1995, lot 386; Sotheby's Amsterdam, 16th & 17th November 1999, lot 185; Sothebys Amsterdam, 15 December 2004, lot 234