Peculiar and elegant French console table. The beautifully shaped upper top was originally painted to achieve a stone effect; there is a convenient drawer under the top. The four legs, with a square cross-section, taper downward, and at the bottom they are joined by a top that echoes the outline of the upper one. The entire console table was painted with a matte lacquer finish, then skillfully decorated with neoclassical motifs (see the flounce under the top shelf). Very rich yet timelessly elegant is the decoration of the lower shelf. All the decorations form a refined and pleasing but not excessive aesthetic complex; indeed, it is inferred that the console table was placed in a country residence of some noble Parisian family. Its right size, symmetry and balanced proportions make this piece of furniture a valuable and versatile object that can be placed without difficulty in any kind of environment. The console table was produced in the Neoclassical style between 1770 and 1774 by a craft workshop in the French town of Liffon-le-Grand located in the Vosges department in the Grand Est region, an area famous for woodworking. The time of its creation is the period of the regency of Louis XV the "Beloved," but from 1750 until the king's death a different style of furniture emerged, identified in France as Louis XVI and in the rest of Europe as Neoclassical, in which classicism and antiquity became a source of inspiration in the search for harmonies and proportions and where straight lines prevailed and the use of decoration was reduced. The Neoclassical Louis XVI style, sober and orderly, had legitimacy even before the king's coronation in 1774. Around 1760, signs of a profound renewal in furniture structure began to appear. Slowly curves diminished their momentum to give way to straight lines and surfaces became flat; the taste for classical antiquity, aroused by the archaeological discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii, became increasingly sensitive and concentrated in a skillful reworking of classical elements to give rise to the Neoclassical style (Louis XVI in France) that spread from 1770 throughout Europe. From the early 1700s there are splendid examples of lacquered furniture with patinas in shades of white and ivory. Marie Antoinette, the Bonaparte sisters, and Marie Louise of Austria supported this typically French fashion of making graceful and romantic furniture with patinas in pastel tones: the famous powder blue, antique white, and powder pink. Only a light restoration was performed on the console table without removing the signs of time that tell its story and make it fascinating and important.
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SILVER Seller in Prato, Italy
