Bonhams 1793 : A fine Louis XV style gilt bronze mounted kingwood bureau platafter a model by Gaudreauspossibly by Henry Dassonfourth quarter 19th century

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7 Mar 2011 10:00 PST San Francisco
Fine European Furniture and Decorative Arts including Garden Statuary
Back to auction 19146

A fine Louis XV style gilt bronze mounted kingwood bureau plat
after a model by Gaudreaus
possibly by Henry Dasson
fourth quarter 19th century

The brass banded serpentine top with an inset gilt embossed leather writing surface over a frieze drawer flanked by cabinet doors opening to three drawers inlaid sans traverse with a coronet above fleur de lys. Overall decorated with mounts exuberantly cast as ribbon tied acanthus and floral vines suspending portrait medallions and coins cast with Classical figures raised on cabriole legs with ram's heads at the knees and volute toes, the sides mounted with a medallion of Athena, the reverse faux drawer mounted with a mask of a Classic beauty.
height 33in (84cm); width 68in (172cm); depth 38in (97cm)

Sold for US$ 48,800 inc. premium

Footnotes

Antoine Robert Gaudreaus
(1682-1746), maître 1708
Descended from a Burgundian family, and the son of a cobbler, after an apprenticeship he established a workshop in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Increasingly prosperous his name first appears in the day book of the Garde-Meuble Royal in 1726, providing a variety of fashionable furniture for the crown. A medal cabinet in kingwood was made for the Cabinet Interieur of Louis XV at Versailles, with bronze mounts, similar to the offered lot, cast as Classical medals suspended from ribbons entwined with fruited vines.

Henry Dasson (1825-1896)
Dasson one of the most celebrated Parisian bronzier ébénistes, his work is renown for the fine casting of the metalwork ormolu and gilding. He specialized in the reproduction and revival of the works of the period styles of Louis XV and XVI. He participated in the 1878 Paris Exposition and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1883 and was awarded the Grand Prix Artistique at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle.

Literature:
A commode signed by Dasson with similar scrolling gilt mounts with ribbons suspending Classical medals and bold ram's heads on the legs is pictured in
Christopher Payne, 19th Century European Furniture, pub. 1981, plate 147