Display Pedestal Attributed To A.-g. Fourdinois, France, Circa 1865

Rare Napoleon III display pedestal with curved front, in wood veneer and chiseled and gilded bronze ornamentation. Topped by a rotating circular top underlined by a frieze of laurels, it is decorated on three sides with floral marquetry and interlacing in cartouches delimited by boxwood nets, and underlined with gilded bronze rods. The front is decorated with a bouquet of flowers inlaid in a large oval ribboned medallion surmounted by a garland of flowers and highlighted with laurels. The base, in frisage marquetry, is surrounded by an egg-and-dart frieze and a frieze of foliage in gilded bronze.

Biography :
Alexandre-Georges Fourdinois was born in Paris in 1799 and died in 1871. Founding his house in 1835, he became one of the most important furniture sculptors-manufacturers of the Second Empire, official supplier of the Empress Eugénie and had among his clientele princess Mathilde, the bankers Pereire and Ottinguer, La Païva and the Rothschilds.
Until 1848, he worked with the sculptor Fossey, and participated together in the Exhibition of French Industrials Products in 1844 where they won a silver medal. At the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855, he shared with F. Barbedienne the medal of honor. The London Universal Exhibition in 1862 gave him two medals de grande excellence de composition et d’exécution and the rank of officer of the Légion d’Honneur. In 1867, he left his business to his son Henri-Auguste who worked with him since 1860.