Bavarian Maplewood, Cherrywood and Walnut Marquetry Commode from the circle of the Spindler Brothers
of serpentine bombé outline, the top with a marquetry reserve of birds and flowers, the three long drawers inset with maplewood panels interrupted by marquetry flowers and with finely-chased gilt-bronze handles and lock-plates; the underside of the top with a pencil inscription in French saying that the commode had been restored in Saar-Union (now Sarre-Union), Alsace Lorraine in April 1885
Very much in the manner of the earlier phase of work by Johann Friedrich Spindler (1726-1799) and his brother, Heinrich Wilhelm Spindler (1738-1788), if not by them this commode is certainly by a maker influenced by them and close to the Bayreuth court.
Sons of Johann Jacob Spindler (1691-1770), Johann Friedrich and Heinrich Wilhelm joined their father as cabinet-makers to the court of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. In 1731 Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1711-1763) married Frederick the Great’s older and adored sister, Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1756) and, after the death of his father in 1735, he and his wife set upon a course of turning Bayreuth into a miniature Verssailles. The Spindler family of cabinet-makers was integral in creating the furnishings for these new palatial buildings, including producing the panelling for a small cabinet room at Schloss Fantaisie zu Donndorf bei Bayreuth with pictorial marquetry within a rococo framework . In 1763, their patroness having died tragically young, they were lured by her brother, Frederick the Great, to Berlin and Potsdam, where they created, working with the bronze-caster Johann Melchior Kambli, a series of extraordinarily elaborate pieces of furniture.