Attribué à MARTIN CARLIN (actif à Paris, 1759-1785)

Pair of mahogany and marble shelves Paris, Louis XVI period, Fir and oak frame, solid Cuban mahogany; Cuban mahogany and white Carrara marble veneer on the tops; partially gilded brass trim with leaf and mercury, burnished and bitten Restorations to the rear legs and the frame of the trays H. 95 cm, W. 57.4 cm, D. 24.8 cm Provenance Galerie Pellat de Villedon, Versailles Private collection, Paris, 2012 This pair of tables with four trays regularly arranged along solid mahogany uprights rests on four turned and tapered legs of the same wood, with finely chased and gilded brass shoes. The upper shelf, finely molded, is veneered in white Carrara marble, the other three in Cuban mahogany. All of them are surrounded by a gilded brass gallery, partially amatized and burnished, whose frieze of rings is identical to that of the galleries that adorn a three-top table from the former Hammel collection, stamped by Martin Carlin (Fig. 1). The hooves are also identical. Martin Carlin, to whom our pair of shelves can be attributed, was a cabinetmaker of German origin who had married the sister of the famous Jean-François Oeben and had become friends with Pierre Roger Vandercruse Lacroix. Another model of shelf, also stamped by Martin Carlin, should be compared with our pair. Both pieces of furniture have the same fine molding under the marble top. The one coming from the castle of Méreville hides in addition a drawer with a removable shelf (fig. 2). Additional information from the collector is available in the PDF by QR Code. Collector's information sheet updated with the results of the analysis of the brass according to the Heginbotham protocol