Attribué à BERNARD II VAN RIESEN BURGH, DIT B.V.R.B.

WRITING TABLE OF THE AMBASSADOR PAUL DUTASTA Paris, Louis XV period, between 1745 and 1749 Oak frame; rosewood; violet wood; gilt bronze; green leather with gilt edging Some missing veneer H. 71 cm, W. 67 cm, D. 42 cm Mark : bronzes stamped with the "C" crowned hallmark, used between 1745 and 1749 PROVENANCE Former Paul Dutasta collection Former collection F.J.B. Horstmann, castle Oud Clingendaal (Holland) Former collection of Mrs Harvey S. Firestone Jr , United States Paris Collection EXHIBITION The Detroit Institute of Arts, April-June 1956, French Taste in the Eighteenth Century BIBLIOGRAPHY Collection Paul Dutasta, former ambassador, sale catalogue, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 3-4 June 1926, lot 147, reproduced pl. XXXIV Collection F.J.B. Horstmann, sale catalogue, Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Cie, 19-21 November 1929, reproduced lot 86. French Taste in the Eighteenth century, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, 1956, reproduced with its notice cat. 33 This writing table, decorated with garlands of flowers and foliage inlaid with violet wood and trimmed with bronzes that have retained their original gilding, belongs to the category of light and precious furniture that the 18th century liked to multiply in its richest interiors. These small tables answered a new need for comfort or, according to the word of the time, convenience. They were easily moved within a room or from one room to another, according to the whims of guests and daily social events. This is the main reason why these tables were called "flying". The merchant-merchants, established in Paris in the Saint-Honoré district for the greatest of them, knew how to skilfully excite the tastes of their customers for these luxury pieces of furniture. Thanks to the creative and flexible talent of the most important cabinetmakers of the time, they were able to offer a demanding and whimsical clientele true masterpieces, among which our table is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful models known from the Rocaille period of 1745-1750. The balance of the frame, which flares out slightly towards the back, thus increasing the presence of the furniture, the perfect control of the deliberately pronounced curves of the legs, the delicate curving of the belt and the top covered with its original leather, all testify to the almost innate understanding that its maker had of the canons that shaped the ideal of the Rocaille style at the time. The whole piece of furniture, whose front forms a large drawer, is entirely veneered with rosewood placed in violet wood borders and presents on all its sides and at the top of its feet a delicate work of floral marquetry treated in end wood, a technique that was one of the great specialties of Bernard II Van Riesen Burgh (circa 1700 - circa 1766), one of the most famous cabinetmakers of the Louis XV period. B.V.R.B. was the author of some of the most luxurious furniture of the 18th century. Although based in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, he worked with the great mercer merchants of the Saint-Honoré district mentioned above - François-Charles Darnault, Thomas-Joachim Hébert, Lazare Duvaux, SimonPhilippe Poirier - and supplied the King and enlightened amateurs through them. In the 1740's, B.V.R.B. was one of the first to bring back the flower marquetry which had gone out of fashion in France since 1700. He developed the famous marquetry of wood of end made of flowers of wood of violet standing out on clear bottom as one can see it on this writing table. Around 1745, he replaced the satinwood he usually used for his backgrounds with rosewood, as can be seen here or on the writing table that the merchant Thomas Joachim Hébert delivered on April 6, 1746 for the retiring cabinet of Marie-Thérèse Raphaëlle at the Château de Versailles (fig. 1). The gilt bronze ornaments decorating this table are of a dazzling quality of chasing and bear the famous hallmark with the crowned 'C' which allows us to date them precisely between 1745 and 1749. In February 1745, Louis XV promulgated an edict which established this mark "on all old and new works of pure copper, cast iron, bronze and others, of mixed copper, ground, beaten, forged, flattened, engraved, gilded, silvered and coloured without exception". This unpopular tax decided to support the War of the Austrian Succession was abolished in February 1749, at the time of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The prestige of this writing table goes hand in hand with that of those who owned it. At the beginning of the 20th century, it belonged to the ambassador Paul Dutasta, whose important col