A rsatinwood writing table signed Escalier de Cristal

A rectangular Louis XVI style satinwood writing table, decorated on all sides with gilt bronze frames. The rectangular top with brass bound edge and inset with a tooled leather writing surface above two frieze drawers flanking an ormolu Zephyr mask, opposing false drawers with conforming decoration, on turned tapering fluted legs and gilded bronze castors.
Stamped Escalier de Cristal / Paris to the underside.
Late 19th century

This writing table is a very faithful reproduction, by l’Escalier de Cristal, of a writing table stamped J.F DUBUT, executed around 1775, which today belongs to the collections of the Nissim de Camondo museum in Paris. Moïse de Camondo, had acquired it at auction in 1912 from the Jacques Doucet collection, and dispalyed it in the Huets drawing room of his private mansion in the rue de Monceau. Two significant origins in the transmission of this piece of furniture to the present day.

A major institution in the Parisian luxury trade throughout the 19th century, the Escalier de Cristal was founded in 1804 at the Palais Royal by the widow Desarnaud, who offered furniture and works of art, mainly made of crystal and gilt bronze. First sold in 1830 to Jacques Boin, ancestor to the goldsmith Georges Boin, the Escalier de Cristal was bought in 1847 by Pierre Isidore Lahoche, who joined forces with his son-in-law Emile-Augustin Pannier in 1852. L'Escalier de Cristal underwent a new development under the direction of the Pannier family and left the Palais Royal in 1872 for the new Opera district, 1 rue Aubert and 6 rue Scribe. It was under the leadership of Henry Pannier, from the 1870s, that the Cristal staircase specialized in luxurious reproductions of 18th century French furniture, like this writing table. A Collector and an excellent designer Henry Pannier, consigns drawings of furniture and objects sold by the Escalier de Cristal in notebooks, the models of which he has taken from private collections or at auction.