A grey granite topped gilt-bronze and bronze guéridon table, Baltic or Russian first quarter 19th century

the circular segmentally veneered top within a gilt-bronze border with an alternating band  of c-scroll cartouches enclosing lambrequins with husk trails on a stippled ground above a concave-sided triform stem and fluted turned supports terminating in a recumbent female sphinx with braids and drapery headdress on a concave-sided triform base on brass castors

In overall good conserved condition although the top is warped and needs some attention. Attractive detail to casting of the sphinxes.The gilt-bronze sphinxes are slightly dirty and would benefit from a light clean according to taste.The triform bronze base has probably been repatinated.
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Comparative Literature:
Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel, Jean-Pierre Samoyault, Le Mobilier de Versailles, chefs d'oeuvre du XIXe siécle, Dijon, 2009, p. 132, no. 27.
L. De Gröer, Les Arts Décoratifs de 1790 à 1850, 1985, Fribourg, p. 58, fig. 86.
Natalya Mavrodina, The Art of Russian Stone Carvers, 18th-19th Centuries, The Catalogue of the Collection, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 2007, p. 108, no. 110.
I. Sychev, Russian Chandeliers of the Classical period. 1760-1830, St. Petersburg, 2003, p. 76, figs. 363 and 364.

This intriguing table with a segmentally veneered grey granite top on a gilt-bronze and bronze base would at first sight appear to be in the French Empire style. However, due to certain features of its design, execution and materials employed, it is more likely to have a Baltic or Russian origin.

This guéridon is in the Empire style which almost certainly must have been inspired by the designs of Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine in their Recueil de décorations intérieures, first published in 1801. There is a design for guéridon table in Plate 21, made for Count S,. in St. Petersburg with a similarly shaped tapering support on splayed sphinx feet reproduced here in fig. 1. The female sphinx on the base is certainly influenced by a guéridon stamped Jacob D.R. Meslee with an Italian marble top by the Florentine Scianta brothers, which was executed in around 1805, for the apartments in the Elysée Palace of Prince and Princess Murat. It is now in the Grand Trianon at Versailles and illustrated by Clémentel, Samoyault, op. cit., p. 132, no. 27, the design of which is reproduced here in fig. 2. Another example created for the Palace of Saint-Cloud is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum ( Inventory number: W13.-1939) and illustrated by  De Gröer,  op. cit., p. 58, fig. 86.

The grey granite segmentally veneered top combined with the pine carcass wood beneath, the unusual and somewhat naïve design of the gilt-bronze band around the top and the granite veneered triform stem are not of French conception.

It is also worthwhile considering a malachite veneered guéridon table in the Hermitage, conceived in a similar vein to the offered table, with a facetted veneered malachite stem on female sphinx supports and a triform base, illustrated by Mavrodina,op. cit., p. 108, no. 110. Furthermore, the sphinxes bear strong similarities in the depiction of their faces, braids and drapery to that supporting a Russian candelabrum, illustrated by Sychev, op. cit., p. 76, figs. 363 and 364.