Offered by Antiquités Philippe Glédel
18th Furniture, country french furniture
Rare and luxurious small chest of drawers called "d'entre-deux" curved on all sides.
This very well structured and perfectly balanced model is covered with a veneer of violet wood cut across and arranged in diamond curls and butterfly wings with frames of wide fillets. Its front offers an opulent crossbow curve and presents three drawers on three rows separated by intermediate crossbars darkened with brass flutes. It is topped with a red marble from Flanders with a molded edge of a beak of corbels that follows the shape of the chest of drawers.
The front uprights with pinched corners request a slight curve in elevation of the sides which are also curved in plan. They are connected by a low crosspiece supported by two spouts whose straight lines bend and curve to form the wide central apron.
The whole is enriched by a precious garniture of original gilded bronzes where a rich naturalistic repertoire is deployed with suppleness, mainly composed of bat wing motifs and "C" shaped movements. The quality of the bronzes, very openwork, well embossed then softened by a very delicate chasing, is to be underlined.
The quality of the frame is as high as the quality of the decoration, made of beautiful fir boards with beech drawers and their walnut bottoms, deep intermediate floors on which the drawers slide.
The crossbow movement, born in the Regency period (which is found in Paris mainly on the chests of drawers of masters), the symmetrical order awakened by a slight asymmetry, the presence of brass flutes, the signature of a cabinetmaker born in 1675 (and which we are certain had the status of Master Cabinetmaker in 1714) *, the absence of a Jurande mark, the species of the frame (fir and walnut), confirm a contemporary dating to the Regency period.
This model is therefore "full period", very elegant and suitable for furnishing small rooms it will endure under Louis XV (and so we see below in documentation the cabinetmaker Mondon resume, a few decades later, the models of Mallerot or Lieutaud).
The piece of furniture is in a superb original condition (no notable accident to report), with all its bronzes of the period, its original and not damaged marble of a thickness of 26 mm as well as its three old and similar locks (a key in chased and gilded bronze), an original condition sublimated by a very delicate restoration and a varnish made by our cabinetmaker.
Stamped (twice) with the monogram M M for Michel Mallerot.
Parisian work from the end of the Regency period.
Around 1720 - 1725.
Michel Mallerot (1675 - 1753), is a Parisian cabinetmaker still little known, as are the cabinetmakers of the early eighteenth century. He is probably mentioned for the first time in the 1927 edition of the Comte de Salverte's book: Les Ébénistes du XVIIIe siècle. Their works and their marks (corrected and completed corpus) ** and Pierre Verlet cites him in the nomenclature of cabinetmakers in the second edition of his book: Les meubles français du XVIIIe siècle published in 1982.
Let us recall that it is only from 1743, following the promulgation of the corporations, then the edict of 1751 that cabinetmakers are obliged to stamp their furniture. Moreover, the greatest cabinetmakers often worked for the merchants merciers or the crown and in these two circumstances were not required to stamp.
Thus he was, with Sageot, Gaudreaux, Doirat, Lieutaud, Garnier and a few others, one of the first to stamp, and with his simple initials in the broad outline as the first stamps often were. A chest of drawers from our old collections, similarly stamped but with the addition of his signature drawn "à la rubrique" under the marble, corroborates the attribution of these initials MM to Michel Mallerot.
** In reference to this text, and without doubt by reading too hastily leading to a wrong interpretation, we could read that Michel Mallerot would have been received as a master cabinetmaker in 1740. At the age of 65 he would have beaten the record of the oldest applicant to this title. In truth, we do not know the date of his accession to the master's degree, Verlet (below) does not indicate it either and Salverte takes here an old text which could be a letterhead for example and thus Michel Mallerot was neither more bourgeois nor more of a cabinetmaker after 1740 than before. Being French, which was not without advantages, and given his date of birth, we can rather assume that he became a master in the very first years of the 18th century.
Additional research has allowed us to learn a little more about this cabinetmaker: First of all, we need to be more precise about his address, which was located "rue de la Roquette on the left between the Arquebuse and the Voierie". He married a certain Mellot Marie and had descendants (there is a trace of a son who was a carpenter or cabinetmaker). But the most interesting is an act dated 1714 cited as "concerned with an allotted between the aforementioned and Cibot Nicolas, for a contract of two and a half years, recorded on 16/5/1714". Archives nationales. Minutier central des notaires de Paris. File of the craftsmen of the XVIIIth century. We learn from this that the cabinetmaker employed a journeyman at this date.
* Thus we can state with certainty that Mallerot was already (and if not before this date) a master cabinetmaker in 1714.
If we have no knowledge (and perhaps not yet) of commissioned models for the very high Parisian aristocracy or the crown made by this cabinetmaker, he obviously worked for a wealthy Parisian clientele, and the chests of drawers we know of, contemporary and close to those of François Garnier or Etienne Doirat, by their quality of finish, the beauty of their veneers and the chasing of their bronzes, have nothing to envy to the work of these two great masters.
Dimensions : 0,83 m high x 0,89 m wide (0,84 m in front) x 0,53 m deep.
