Ref.9355
Paneled room with Coromandel lacquer panels

Louis XVI style paneled room created in 1915 with beautiful Coromandel lacquer panels representing foliage and birds in an Oriental style. It is made up of cream coloured panels, emphasised by the raspberry red of the mouldings, and pannels elaborately decorated in Coromandel lacquer. The panels feature a bucolic iconography, influenced by Japonism. This feature, very typical of Louis XVI style is enhanced by the technique of using Coromandel lacquer, itself coming from the Far East. Each panel features an aquatic scene, a mixture of coloured birds and floral branches arranged like Ikebana, by the side of a lake. It comes from a residence situated at avenue Foch in Paris. A Louis XVI style fireplace mantel with bronzes that is being cleaned, will soon complete this item.

Ref.11069
Chinese style clock with Foo dog decoration.

This bronze with a brown patina transformed into a clock was made at the end of the 19th century. The Foo dog, an example of the vogue of oriental art in the time of Japanism, with one leg resting on a balloon, carries the dial.

Ref.12449
Eugène Piat (attr. to), Gilt-bronze wall light

This important gilt-bronze wall light is a work designed by Eugène Piat (1827 – 1903), the maker is, unfortunately, not known. It is decorated with a hybrid monster, called a chimera, holding a decorated basket where the light is. This wall light is typical of the fine art and furniture evolution in the second half of the 19th century linked with the development of a rich middle-class, who needed to show their belonging to a certain social rank by choosing abundant decor. Thus, we observe on our light, an importance given to the decoration which does not settle for just the chimera's body but adds a lot of details. The sinuous body of the monster which seems to be held by an arm of the structure, decorated with repetitive ridges on which one of the two chimera's feet is put, is really mixed up with the entire decorative elements. Indeed, the part that could be considered as the neck at the end of which there is the human head with an open mouth, is in reality a decoration made of curls with vegetal shapes forming a crest all along. Likewise, the wings are inhabited with bronze scrolls and plants and completed with curls which allow a better support for the rest of the light and makes a counterweight to the important basket in which the light is. This basket is hung to the chimera's head by a succession of decorations. One of the two feet is stretched to the basket while the other leaned on a support decorated with a lion mascaron and curls.

Ref.11952
Albert-Ernest CARRIER-BELLEUSE (model by), SÈVRES Manufacture, Kin-Te-Tchin vase, 1884

This pair of porcelain vases with gilt bronze mounts was created by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse in 1884. At the time, the artist was the director of art at the Sèvres Manufacture, a position he held from 1875 until his death in 1887. These two vases, with a rounded belly, are covered in a dark blue glaze, enhanced by drips of a lighter blue. The upper part is adorned with two masks representing chimeras holding rings in their mouths. The neck and base of the vases are adorned with gilt bronze mounts, with the simple lines decorating the neck contrasting with the acanthus leaf motifs embellishing the base. This type of vase, known as “Kin-Te-Tchin”, is an original design by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, who created numerous imaginative vase models and small sculptures during his years as art director at the Sèvres Manufacture. Kin-Te-Tchin, known as Jingdezhen in modern Chinese, was long the porcelain capital of China, achieving a high level of perfection in translucency and brilliance in its productions from the 14th century onwards. The use of its name to designate the shape of these vases suggests a likely Chinese inspiration. This form can also be compared to that of Fang Hu vases produced by the official kilns of this city to imitate archaic Chinese bronzes. The vase’s drip glaze, of great elegance, stems from a particular fascination with the drip-decorated Chinese porcelains of the 19th century. This was a difficult technique for European manufactories, requiring great mastery of oxides and firing. Indeed, oxides are highly sensitive and reactive to temperature, atmosphere, and fluxes, making the firing process often unpredictable and yielding surprising results. The emergence of the Kin-Te-Tchin vase model directly followed Sèvres Manufacture’s recent mastery of this decorative process. This vase is a prime example, with its carefully graduated colors, demonstrating the virtuosity of the Sèvres workshops. The masks, meanwhile, seem to draw from the decorative repertoire of the Italian Renaissance, another recurring source of inspiration for Carrier-Belleuse. The chimera, already present in the ornamental vocabulary of Etruscan antiquity, was widely used by Italian artists and decorators of the 15th and 16th centuries. Our pair of vases can be compared to another example of a Kin-Te-Tchin vase now housed in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where a similar decorative language is found. This vase is illustrated in the book Second Empire & IIIe République: De l’Audace à la Jubilation by Brigitte Ducrot. Another vase of this shape, featuring a flamed violet decor on a red “oxblood” background, is held in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Ref.14787
18th century fireback depicting contemporary figures

Fireback made in the 18th century, showing characters from this time in a medallion framed with laurel leaves.

Ref.11261
Gabriel VIARDOT (attributed to), Japanese furniture with mother-of-pearl inlaid panels, late 19th century

This Japanese-style piece of furniture is perfectly in keeping with the work of cabinetmaker Gabriel Viardot at the end of the 19th century. A talented woodcarver, Gabriel Viardot opened a furniture factory and shop in Paris in 1853. In the 1870s, he decided to devote himself to “Chinese-Japanese furniture”, of which this piece is a fine example. In the lower section, the doors incorporate two imported panels with mother-of-pearl inlays, depicting Sakura and butterflies, symbols of eternity in Far Eastern cultures. The back of the open central section is adorned with a refined bas-relief depicting a tree branch in bloom and a bird in flight. At the top, the asymmetry of the shelves is reminiscent of Japanese cha’dansu (or tea cabinets); some are closed with a mother-of-pearl inlaid panel. The crowning, typical of the artist, takes the shape of a pagoda roof and houses a menacing-looking dragon. The many carved and mother-of-pearl-inlaid details scattered across the surface of the piece reveal the finesse of Viardot’s work. Another piece of furniture, a drawing of which is preserved in the artist’s archives, has a very similar crowning.