Secretary in ebony and courbaril, cherry rosewood and ivory - La Rochelle 18th century

Exceptional Louis XV secretary with doucine in solid Indian ebony, courbaril and Brazilian rosewood, inlaid with ebony, cherry and ivory veneer, opening with a large drawer, a flap and two doors.
Piece of furniture of order.
La Rochelle - 18th century.

Indian ebony (black ebony or calamander) : generally from Ceylon, the most beautiful of ebony, which differs from Macassar ebony and ebony from Madagascar, Gabon or Mozambique. Very heavy and hard wood, with a fine grain and a deep black heart (with the presence of red "moons").

Courbaril (Jatoba / Copal) : Wood from the West Indies and South America (Guyana), particularly hard (it is said that it was taken for "red ebony") and resistant to termites. Over the years, it takes on a color that goes from red to reddish brown.

Rio rosewood (St. Lucia wood): hard and very heavy wood, fine grain, purplish brown color that darkens with polishing. Certainly the most beautiful of the rosewoods. Like the other two species mentioned above, it is particularly sought after for cabinet making and is particularly resistant to attacks by wood borers.

(Documentation attached: L'ESSENCE DU BOIS - Patrick George - Emmanuel Maurin and Marie-Christine Trouy-Jacquemet).


We can see (on the captioned photo) the distribution of the wood, and as is the custom with cabinetmakers in La Rochelle, it is perfectly ordered: ebony for the entire frame (the four uprights and all the crosspieces of the piece of furniture), rosewood for the frames of the doors and the flap, courbaril for the top (with frame and miter cuts), the front of the drawer, the panels of the doors and the flap, and the three panels of each side. The cherry for the fillet of the flap, some of the half-branches of the compass rose and the Maltese crosses, the spandrels of the doors and probably also (in counterfeit) the circular counterfeits of the crosses, the ebony veneer for the diamond fillets and the spandrels of the doors, the ebony and ivory veneers for the compass rose and the Maltese crosses, and finally the rosewood veneer for the inside of the flap (i.e. the leather frame).
The interior formwork with its steps in solid courbaril and its six small curved drawers in solid ebony.
For fonçures: those of the large drawer in courbaril, the sides of the small drawers in oak of very beautiful quality and their bottoms in exotic wood, the three horizontal crosspieces of the back in oak and absolutely all the rest of the back in red Saint-Martin wood.
As much to say that this piece of furniture, free of traces of xylophagous, is of an amazing weight.

This piece of furniture is in a magnificent state of preservation (one graft to be noted on the lower right corner of the flap frame), brought back to life by a thorough restoration and a superb filled-wax finish.
The leather is from Clai in Paris, a tan sheepskin gilded with small irons.
The secretary with its four openwork cast brass keyways, its hinges, compasses and wrought iron locks (three iron keys). Note the superb security lock with three points of fixation (and which crosses, under the leather, the whole width of the flap).


Piece of furniture from the "Parisian period".

Cabinetmaker's and commissioned furniture, of high quality, absolutely unique.

La Rochelle, Louis XV period, mid 18th century.