Mazarine Commode in Saint-Martin wood - Landerneau 18th century

Rare Mazarine Commode in red Saint-Martin wood, curved in front and opening with three rows of drawers.

The top is made of two large boards, molded on the edge of a beak of corbel with a cavet with protrusions at the corners, the chest opens with four drawers on three rows. It should be noted that the presence of two drawers in the upper row and a crosspiece between this row and the top are elements that are rarely found on Landerne chests of drawers.
The drawers with overlapping and bordered by a quarter-round are adorned with original bronze trim: large hanging hands and their supporting rosettes, three large keyholes (one cut and dummy) and six smaller ones (four dummy). Inherited from the "Grand Siècle", it seems at first sight to have only three large drawers.
For the frame: oak drawer frames, with walnut floors for the large drawers, intermediate fir floors and backs in various native woods.

The lines of the furniture are soft and pure, with spouts at the corners of the crosspieces delicately curved, the "Mazarin" feet giving it extra power while their carved ornamentation of an acanthus fall forming a console and a large palmette topping a ribbed deer hoof adds the extra refinement that distinguishes the furniture for the private mansions of the rich merchants of Landerneau

This piece of furniture is in a very good state of conservation, the wood (top, legs, front and sides) is all solid Saint-Martin, without any scratches or dents and almost without grafts, just to point out a small one in the upper left corner of the lower drawer and two small whistle-like grooves at the base of the rear uprights (which we made to hide the later intervention of a not very inspired carpenter who had carved scrolls on it, which constituted on this model a real stylistic heresy).
Completely revised by our carpenter (backs, slides...).
Filled-waxed finish preserving the original patina.
Three large original iron locks (one missing from the upper left drawer).

Large model, of a sober and classical purity, of very good quality.

Landerneau - Middle of the 18th century.


We acquired this chest of drawers from a private seller after an expertise from a sales house and it was offered to us as a "Malouin mahogany chest of drawers", which did not surprise us much, and probably if it had not come to us it would have remained so qualified. We will see below the frequent confusion with the Saint-Malo chest of drawers, and indeed it cannot be denied that the Saint-Martin wood is quite close to mahogany, but it has very particular black streaks (much more marked than those of a Honduran mahogany) and above all a very specific sparse veining which is said to be "partridge wings" (not to be confused with the ferréol known as "partridge wood").
To repeat what we have written elsewhere: almost always we will see them referred to* as mahogany. Thus we have recently read a cacophonous "yellow mahogany of Saint-Martin", which is a great misunderstanding** and very explicit on the jumble of the terms "mahogany" and "exotic woods".

* Exotic woods.
**All the more so when the wood in question, in our humble opinion, is neither mahogany nor yellow Saint-Martin. There are so many unknown exotic woods such as grignon or bagasse for example...

Red Saint-Martin wood, also known as Angelim Rosa, is an exotic reddish-brown wood of the Fabaceae family, of which there are three varieties (red, the most common on port furniture, yellow, much more rarely used, and white, which seems to have been little used in port cabinet making). Most of it comes from the West Indies and more precisely from the Caribbean (while the one used for the furniture of the Atlantic ports comes from Guyana where we also exploit guaiac, ferreol, bagasse, balata, wacapou, amourette and green ebony).
It is a wood as hard as it is decorative (it differs from amaranth and mahogany by its branched aspect (partridge wing) that one sometimes meets indeed, although quite rarely (and it is added to this the fact that it is very seldom identified), on harbor furniture since the 17th century. There is no doubt that Landerneau has made a specialty of its use (rare in Nantes and almost unknown in Saint-Malo and Bordeaux).
It is listed in its three varieties in the list of exotic woods of Malfoy.
To learn more about this exotic wood, a pdf is available online from CIRAD:
https://ctbg.cirad.fr/content/download/1053/5624/file/st martin rouge.pdf

It should be noted that we are dealing here with the red variety (and not yellow), even if its tone is lighter than usual, and that the cabinetmaker has used the contrasts between heartwood and sapwood in the front.

To learn more about the Leon port chests of drawers, see the description of the chest of drawers on our site where we have compiled an inventory of the chests of drawers in Landerneau.