A pair of Régence giltwood console tables, circa 1720

Acquired from Yann Allée, Paris, 2001.

The form and ornament of this giltwood console exudes a Régence sensibility that is in full maturation, developing an increasingly assertive ornamental style that prioritised dramatic movement and sculptural flourishes over the airy, harmonious ease it had previously shown.

If there is one feature that anchors this table in the Régence and not the fully-fledged Rococo style, it is its consistent symmetry. Notably, the ornamental detail at the centre of the stretcher, called the noix (‘nut’) in French, is perfectly symmetrical: by around 1720, there were already examples of some console tables so rampantly profuse that they overstepped the threshold into asymmetry, such as the example attributed to François Roumier that was exhibited at the Musee Carnavelet in 2023,¹ but this is generally associated with the coming decades of the century. In the Régence, it remained more common for decorative motifs to be arranged in a balanced way, even as they became denser, looser and more playful in their distribution: compare the Roumier table with the table in the Dauphin’s Apartment at Versailles (VMB 692), on which the characterful dragons and numerous mascarons are all arranged with precise symmetry.

Another detail that is typical of the Régence and not of later Louis XV design is the repeated role of circles. On this table, they are particularly prominent in the form of the burnished bosses at the centre of the apron and the stretcher, and the regularity of the circle as a motif echoes the more geometric character of earlier Régence pieces. This is illustrated by comparison with the Régence table GME 17237 in the Mobilier National: this table is one step further back in the evolution of eighteenth-century furniture design than the present lot, and it is evident on that example that the centrally placed circular apron harmonises with the use of strapwork ornament throughout. The present lot, by contrast, demonstrates how the rectilinear character of strapwork evolved into the dominance of C-scrolls.

¹ J. de Los Llanos and U. Jardat (ed.), La Régence à Paris : L’aube des Lumières, Paris, 2023, cat.81, p.116.