Louis XVI Ormolu and Marble Gueridon

A fine Louis XVI style gilt bronze and marble centre table or end table, the brocatelle d’Espagne marble top within a gilt bronze edge supported in scrolling, zoomorphic legs supporting a further marble under-tier and united by concave stretchers with pineapple and sunflower finial

Height 71 cm (28 inches)
Width 61 cm (24 inches)
Diameter 61 cm (24 inches)
French. Early 20th Century

Though the present table dates from the early 20th century, the original design for this elegant guéridon was almost certainly provided by Dominique Daguerre, the celebrated marchand-mercier, whose innovative ‘arabesque’ and ‘Etruscan’ furniture gained him much acclaim in the last quarter of the 18th Century. Daguerre probably developed the design circa 1785, as the sale of M. Bergeret on 24 April 1786 lists one example with a porphyry top: ‘388 Une table de porphyre, ronde, suportée par un pied en bronze à trois consoles à bandeaux, a baguettes dorées, & anneaux; le tout lié par doubles baguettes de forme triangulaire. Hauteur 26 pouces, diametre 14 pouces. The table was sold for 340 livres to M. Letoffé.

A similar guéridon sold Christie’s Paris, 18 March 2003, lot 333, is faintly stamped by Adam Weisweiler with whom Daguerre collaborated on numerous occasions.

MAISON JANSEN

Maison Jansen was a Paris-based interior decoration office founded in 1880 by Dutch-born Jean-Henri Jansen. Jansen is considered the first truly global design firm, serving clients in Europe, Latin America, North America and the Middle East. This House was located at 23, rue de l’Annonciation, Paris, and closed in 1989.

From its beginnings Maison Jansen combined traditional furnishings with influences of new trends including Anglo-Japanese style, the Arts and Crafts movement, and Turkish style. The firm paid great attention to historical research with which it attempted to balance clients’ desires for livable, usable, and often dramatic space. Within ten years the firm had become a major purchaser of European antiques, and by 1890 had established an antiques gallery as a separate firm that acquired and sold antiques to Jansen’s clients and its competitors as well.

In the early 1920s Jean-Henri Jansen approached Stéphane Boudin, who was then working in the textile trimming business owned by his father Alexandre Boudin, and brought him on board. Accounts of the arrangement vary. Speculation existed that Boudin was able to provide financial solvency to the prominent but capital-poor atelier. Boudin’s attention to detail, concern for historical accuracy, and ability to create dramatic and memorable spaces brought increasing new work to the firm. Boudin was made director and presided over an expansion of the firm’s offices and income.

Not originally equipped with its own workrooms for producing furniture the firm began by relying upon antiques and the furniture contracted to outside cabinetmakers. By the early 1890s Maison Jansen had established its own manufacturing capacity producing furniture of contemporary design, as well as reproductions, primarily in the Louis XIV, Louis XVI, Directoire, and Empire styles.

Throughout the firm’s history, it employed a traditional style drawing upon European design, but influence of contemporary trends including the Vienna Secession, Modernism, and Art Deco has also appeared in Jansen interiors and in much of the custom furniture the firm produced between 1920 and 1950.

Under Boudin’s leadership, Maison Jansen provided services to the royal families of Belgium, Iran, and Serbia; Elsie de Wolfe, and Lady Olive Baillie’s Leeds Castle in Kent, England. The firm’s most published work was a project by Boudin and Paul Manno, the head of Jansen’s New York office, for the U.S. White House during the administration of John F. Kennedy. At the same time, Jansen completed the interior of the motor yacht Chambel IV, now renamed Northwind II. Northwind II is one of the few remaining complete Jansen commissions and which Adam Bentley was proud to assist with the conservation of in 2009-2010.

After Stéphane Boudin’s death in 1967, colleague Pierre Delbée took over the business. Maison Jansen came under new ownership in 1979 and finally closed in 1989.

 

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SKU: C2808 Category: