REGENCE STYLE KINGWOOD, ROSEWOOD PARQUETRY INLAID AND GILT-METAL MOUNTED BUREAU PLAT,Paris, circa 1900, after André-Charles Boulle (1642 -1732). Leather top; bullnose edge; three aligned frieze drawers; serpentine apron upon cabriole legs - 31 1/4 in. x 78 1/4 in. x 38 in. Estimate $10,000-15,000
PROVENANCE: Sotheby's New York, 19th Century Furniture, Sculpture, Ceramics, Silver and Works of Art; April 22, 2010, N08627, Lot 426
Sotheby's Catalogue Note: This bureau plat with its recessed central drawer and female mask corner mounts is based upon a series of celebrated bureaux plats with female masks produced around 1715-20 in the workshop of the most celebrated French ebeniste of the Louis XIV period, Andre'-Charles Boulle (1642-1732). Boulle usually worked in tortoiseshell and brass marquetry, however, 18th century examples are also recorded in amaranth and ebony. Boulle also produced models with satyr masks chutes. Similar desks are in the Wallace Collection on London, the Getty Museum in California, the Frick Collection in New York, and the celebrated model commissioned for the Duc de Bourbon is now in the permanent collection at the Chateau de Versailles.
