Pedestal Table Stamped Lacroix + Inventory No. + Château De Saint Cloud

Rare Gueridon Stamped R. LACROIX + Inventory Number + CHATEAU de SAINT-CLOUD...and Fleur de Lys .. Its Top measures 49 CM x 36 CM Its Height is 75 CM ROYAL CHÂTEAU The Château de Saint-Cloud is one of the most prestigious royal and princely residences in the history of France. Its history begins in 1577, when Catherine de Medici offered Jérôme de Condi, a banker of Florentine origin, the Hôtel d'Aulnay, acquired by the crown a few years earlier on the hillside overlooking the Seine. The small house quickly changed its appearance to become an elegant Renaissance residence overlooking a terraced garden decorated with statues and fountains. It was here that, on July 31, 1589, the fanatical League monk Jacques Clément plunged a knife into the stomach of the last of the Valois, who had taken refuge in Saint-Cloud, and who, before dying, designated his Bourbon cousin, Henri IV, as successor. VANDERCRUSE Roger dit LACROIX Roger dit Lacroix or RVLC Roger Vandercruse dit Lacroix (1728-1799) - cabinetmaker - master's degree obtained on February 6, 1755: A highly talented cabinetmaker, Roger Vandercruse Lacroix is one of those who most marked the Transition period and contributed to the evolution of furniture towards classicism. Of Flemish origin, this son of a free worker cabinetmaker born in Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine immediately integrated into the community and formed numerous alliances, notably with the cabinetmakers Jean-François Oeben and Jean-Henri Riesener, successively husbands of his elder sister, Françoise-Marguerite. He was also a great friend of the merchant Pierre Migeon to whom he delivered many light pieces of furniture and of the cabinetmaker Martin Carlin. He supplied to merchants such as Poirier and Dag je uerre. In 1755, after his father's death, Lacroix decided to take over his father's factory on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The high quality of his works and a particularly prolific output quickly earned him a great reputation. From 1769, through his colleague, the merchant Gilles Joubert, he was in charge of all court orders. He thus supplied several pieces of furniture to the royal residences, notably to the Countess of Provence and Madame Victoire. Within his community, Lacroix held a respected position: a juror from 1768 to 1770, he was then successively syndic and deputy in 1784. A great specialist in fancy furniture, Lacroix distinguished himself with very homogeneous Louis XV furniture of high quality and great talent as a marquetry artist. His style is recognizable by his marquetry of crossbars and quatrefoils known as "à la reine". He most often adorns his works with nuanced mosaics and small wooden paintings to the composition of which he brings taste and fantasy. His first production, in the Louis XV period, evolves with the attributes of the Transition period. At the end of the reign of Louis XV, he is one of the first to make furniture in lemon tree inlaid with ebony. He also imagines decorations in monochrome, with designs of flowers or Chinese subjects. His chests of drawers, almost all of a Transition model, most often consist of a rectangular case, curved legs and two main drawers surmounted by three drawers in frieze covered with interlacing of gilt bronze. The marquetry is organized in three panels on the front surrounded by gilt bronze frames notched at the corners in square or round, with gilt bronze rosettes. The motifs are most frequently geometric patterns or vases of flowers. He then made Louis XVI models of great precision marked by the arrival of a characteristic motif, the helical rosette. Lacroix specialized, like Topino, in the bonheurs-du-jour which he liked to decorate in the Chinese style with a marquetry of small vases of flowers or various utensils, derived from motifs on Chinese screens. The cabinetmaker also made many small tables for which he used repeated motifs of interlocking circles or diamonds, grids with eyelets or fleurons or even vertical yellow and green stripes which imitate straw marquetry. Lacroix ended his activity during the Revolution, without a son or wife to take