Regence period console table attributed to François Roumier

A rare and exceptional Regence period console table, in richly molded, carved, openworked and gilded oak, attributed to François Roumier (1701-1748).
The belt is openworked with foliate scrolls and garlands of flowers, with a man's head crowned with feathers in the center. The sides are decorated with dragons and foliage. The console rests on counter-curved uprights adorned with pearls and flanked by satyrs' heads, joined by a spacer decorated with an openwork shell amid floral scrolls and piaster friezes.
It is topped with a thick Flanders royal red, with a period corbin beak, following the extravagant curves of this piece of furniture.
The exceptional quality of the carving, the richness of the ornamentation and the unusual proportions of this console suggest that it was made for a royal project by a member of the Société pour les Bâtiments du Roi, an agency founded in 1699 on the initiative of sculptors André Legoupil, Marin Bellan, Pierre Taupin and Jules Degoullons. These sculptors worked on woodwork decorations and carved furniture such as mirrors, consoles and sometimes armchairs.
Some of the ornamental details, such as the exuberant shell on the brace and the bulge at the top of the legs, can be compared to drawings by François Roumier from his Livre de plusieurs desseins de Pieds de tables en console illustrated in B. Pons, De Paris à Versailles, 1699-1736, Association des Publications près les universités de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 1986.

François Roumier (1701-1748), nmmé sculpteur ordinaire du roi in 1721. He was famous for this type of furniture, and published numerous works such as the Livre de plusieurs Desseins de Pieds de Tables en Consoles, published after his death in 1750. Working for most of the royal residences, Roumier's masterpiece is a magnificent carved table supplied in 1737 for the gilded cabinet in Louis XV's private apartments at Versailles (VMB 1034.3). A pair of gilded wood consoles by Roumier, dated circa 1740, are now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1972.284.5 and 1972.284.4).

Condition: very good. Period gilding with traces of wear, unrestored period marble.