Offered by Franck Baptiste Paris
Extremely rare pair of large corner shelves to hang in solid amaranth wood.
Fiddle-shaped model with six trays with finely hollowed out evolutions of a groove on the front.
Borders with double uprights cut open with geometric reserves in the Anglo-Chinese style*.
Maintenance restorations. (collage)
Parisian work from the Louis XV period around 1760-1770.
Dimensions:
Height: 106cm; Width: 34cm; Depth: 33cm
*The Anglo-Chinese style appeared in England following the engravings of Wililam Chambers published in 1757: “Treatise on Chinese buildings, furniture, clothes, machinery and utensils”.
This fashion is different from the interest in oriental pieces in previous decades.
If in the years 1730-1750 the creation of Chinese salons in the residences of the nobility was common, around 1765 it was the creation of Anglo-Chinese gardens that was in fashion.
Many castles adopted this taste, unlike French gardens.
Chantilly, Amboise, Chanteloup and soon Versailles yielded to this fashion from Great Britain.
The construction of the Chinese Pagoda of Chanteloup will be the climax and one of the best advertisements of this style, the Duc de Choiseul, in disgrace, will receive there one of the most important characters of the time.
It is to furnish this type of construction that a new style of furniture has emerged.
Some visionary cabinetmakers and carpenters will produce pieces of this style from 1765-1770.
We can cite rare armchairs by Georges Jacob, in particular those created for Le Duc de Penthièvre, the octagonal table bearing the mark of Chanteloup and present like the armchairs in the Louvre museum, the library by Pierre Garnier in the museum of decorative arts in Paris and a handful of other pieces that are now part of the greatest collections.
Our opinion :
Referred to in old inventories as “tiered shelves”, these small pieces of furniture often accompanied pairs of corner cupboards.
These tablets were used to present porcelain from China in the salons of the pagodas of the “Anglo-Chinese” gardens.
Due to the very short duration of this fashion, the technical prowess necessary for their constructions and the few clients wealthy enough to carry out this type of arrangement, these pieces were produced in very small quantities.
Because of their great fragility very few have survived the centuries and have come down to us; as for the "Anglo-Chinese" style models, despite our research, we do not know of any others, not even in museums.
This pair is a unique prototype combining airy shapes still Louis XV with English fashion for wood and Asian influences for openwork cutouts.
