FRANCE ÉPOQUE RÉGENCE

FRANCE ÉPOQUE RÉGENCE
CONSOLE TABLE Gilded wood and portor marble
H. 79 cm, W. 108 cm, D. 46 cm Bibliographical
references:
Pierre Kjellberg, Le Meuble Français et européen du Moyen-âge à nos jours, éd. de l'Amateur, Paris, 2002. pp. 134 to 136
Our console table has a large carved decoration of acanthus leaves, openwork vegetal garlands and mantling on a background of latticework. It is adorned with a large apron around the edge, centered on a shell under a frieze of eggs.
The scrolled uprights are topped with shells and rest on baluster feet. A square-section console spacer has a shelf centered in the center of a rosette, intended to receive a precious porcelain.
It was during the flowering of the Regency style that the most sumptuous carved and gilded wooden furniture was created in France. These pieces of furniture, mostly tables and consoles, had appeared in force during the reign of Louis XIV.
Although they were genuine pieces of sculpture, they nevertheless retained the strict architectural order instituted by Charles Le Brun.
The top is still straight but the shapes are becoming more flexible. Intended to be fixed against the woodwork, the consoles, or more exactly the "Pieds de table en console" as they were called at the time; the word "table" in fact only referred to the marble top, offered carpenters and sculptors, with their more pronounced camber than those of tables and their fretworked belts, a particularly favourable terrain for their imagination and virtuosity. Intermediaries between the middle tables and the consoles, some of these pieces of furniture, with four legs, like the tables, are nevertheless intended to be placed against a wall. They can be recognized by their belts, which are carved on only three sides. Automatically translated by DeepL. To see the original version, click here.