Oliver Cornish
Sale Coordinator for Furniture, Sculpture, Rugs & Tapestries
Lot 66*,TP
An Empire mahogany 'curule' bergere C.1805-1810, probably by Jacob frères or the partnership of Francois-Honore-Georges Jacob and Georges Jacob
3 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£4,000 - £6,000
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Thomas Moore
Head of Department
An Empire mahogany 'curule' bergere
C.1805-1810, probably by Jacob frères or the partnership of Francois-Honore-Georges Jacob and Georges Jacob
With a curved back and elongated shaped toprail with scroll incised ends each terminating in a carved flowerhead, with lappet-collared arm supports, on two front lotus-leaf capped leopard monopodia supports each clasped with a scrolled lapel and carved with a bellflower anthemion pendant, the animalistic front legs terminating in paw feet and wooden castors, on splayed tapering square section rear legs terminating in brass beaded collars and conforming castors, with close-nailed leather upholstery, 68.5cm wide x 74cm deep x 99.5cm high, (26 1/2in wide x 29in deep x 39in high)
With a curved back and elongated shaped toprail with scroll incised ends each terminating in a carved flowerhead, with lappet-collared arm supports, on two front lotus-leaf capped leopard monopodia supports each clasped with a scrolled lapel and carved with a bellflower anthemion pendant, the animalistic front legs terminating in paw feet and wooden castors, on splayed tapering square section rear legs terminating in brass beaded collars and conforming castors, with close-nailed leather upholstery, 68.5cm wide x 74cm deep x 99.5cm high, (26 1/2in wide x 29in deep x 39in high)
Footnotes
Empire examples with similar leopard monopodia front legs to those of the present lot, albeit on fauteuils rather than bergeres, include; a pair by Jacob, Sotheby's, Paris, 20 September 2016, Robert de Balkany, lot 24, and a set of four Aubusson tapestry upholstered models, sold Christie's, London, 23 March 2017, Robert de Balkany, Rome and the Cote d'Azur, lot 454.
This form of leopard monopodium, albeit a winged version of it, features earlier on as the front legs on a mahogany fauteuil d'apparat attributed to Georges Jacob, which dates to circa 1800 and sold Christie's, Paris, 11 December 1999, Ancienne Collection Delbee-Jansen, lot 509. This in turn exactly conforms to a slightly earlier design executed by Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine. The latter appears among drawings of several other chairs of a similar type by Percier and Fontaine, and is illustrated in D. Ledoux-Lebard, Le Mobilier Francais du XIXeme Siecle, 1795-1889, 1989, Paris, p. 283, Coll. part./Photo Reunion des Musees Nationaux.
An additional closely related Georges Jacob fauteuil with corresponding winged leopard front terminals to those of the former example, but which has a lozenge trellis splat as opposed to the plain vertical splat on the Christie's version, also features on the same page of the Ledoux-Lebard book, Ibid, p. 283.
By way of further comparison, two pairs of Regency mahogany bergeres produced in England at approximately the same time as the offered model was executed in France, sold Bonhams, New Bond Street, 4 June 2014, Fine English Furniture, Sculpture and Works of Art, lots 109 and 110. Although more closely based upon the chair designs of Thomas Hope and in particular George Smith, these have quite closely related, albeit anglicised versions of, the leopard monopodiae on the above.