Louis XIV EBONY AND Boullework commode “en bureau”

André-Charles Boulle (1642 –1732)

French, c. 1710
Height: 33 inches (85 cm)
Width: 56 inches (144 cm)
Depth: 22 inches (56,5 cm)

The commode has two drawers flanking a roundel and a base with curved legs. Gilt bronze moldings frame panels of “première partie” Boullework (marquetry of brass on tortoiseshell) on the drawer fronts, the sides of the commode and the legs. A gilt bronze mask of a satyr occupies the Boullework roundel at the center of the front, while female masks center the panels on the sides. Rich foliate mounts outline  the contours of the legs and the apron. The veneered top is edged with a brass filet and surrounded by a heavy gilt bronze molding.

Provenance

By family repute the present commode was owned by Marquis Ferdinand de Ghistelle (1735-1813), of Château Vieille Chapelle near Beuvry, Artois. He fled during the French Revolution to Paderborn in Westphalia, near Schloss Schwarzenraben in 1796. He recovered the commode from his Château which lay in ruins, around 1802-1803 upon his return from exile in Paderborn. It is believed that Debray, Represéntant du Roi, assisted in the recovery of this commode and other valuable belongings of the Marquis. The commode was then placed in the Marquis’s house at no.23 Rue de Grade in Mons, where it remained until his death in 1813.

Thence by descent to his grand-daughter Cunigunde Freiin von Asbeck who married in 1824 Engelbert Matthias Freiherr von Horde (1786-1846), the owner of Schloss Schwarzenraben and Eringerfeld. After his death, in 1850, she remarried the widower Wilhelm von der Decken (d. 1870).

Comparable examples:
-Two commodes at the Louvre, Paris
-One commode, formerly at Newby Hall (Yorkshire)
-Private collection.
-Collection of the Duc de Buccleugh and Queensberry.