A LOUIS XVI GILT BRONZE-MOUNTED OVAL MAHOGANY OCCASIONAL TABLE BY PAPST, CIRCA 1790

Galerie Segoura, Paris

François Ignace Papst, maître in 1785

Like many of his contemporaries in the Parisian furniture trade, Papst was of German origin. He was an official supplier to the Royal Garde-Meuble in the final years of the Ancien Regime, and continued to receive government commissions during the Empire and Restoration periods, participating in the Expositions des produits de l'industrie française in 1806 and 1819. This table is in a mature Louis XVI style and is very much in the manner of Papst's contemporary Adam Weisweiler.

An almost identical table of circular form by Papst, formerly in the collection of the Viscounts Astor at Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, was sold Sotheby's London, 10 December 2003, lot 120, and again 8 July 2008, lot 244. The table was supplied to the Astors by the decorating firm Allard for the now vanished Drawing Room in c.1895. and is visible in a Country Life photo of the room taken in 1912.