Console Table With Mahogany Columns, Mercury-gilt Bronzes, Turquoise Blue Marble

Beautiful Empire period console table in blond mahogany and gilt bronze topped with a blue turquin marble. Uprights with columns with capitals and bases in finely chiseled bronze and mercury gilt in matte and shiny. In the center of the drawer, a scene with "beekeeper-lovers" around a hive. With the use of blond mahogany (Saint Domingue mahogany, a rare naturally lighter veneer, not a red mahogany which would be sunned), the quality of its bronzes and the use of a luxury marble (Bleu Turquin), our console table is a high-end production. Empire period 1810s. The very fine work of the bronzes is probably the work of Pierre-Philippe Thomire after models by Percier and Fontaine. The furniture, otherwise of excellent manufacturing quality (blond mahogany on oak), is probably a production of Jacob Desmalter or Charles Lemarchand, cabinetmakers who both collaborated with Thomire. Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843) was one of the most remarkable bronze makers of his generation; he was renowned for his production of bronze furniture under the Ancien Régime. He raised this craft under the Empire to its highest level of quality while creating, in the early years of the 19th century, an industrial company with a European influence. He retired in 1823. In 1804, Thomire took over the Lignereux business, joining forces with his two sons-in-law and Duterme to create the Thomire Duterme company. Thomire & Cie quickly developed an international clientele among the high aristocracy and European courts, but the company suffered from the continental blockade. It was supported by state orders and furniture consigned by the state (a console exhibited at the Grand Trianon with a structure of square pilasters and bronze comparable to ours entered the Imperial Furniture collections in this context). It would be difficult to count the immense quantity of bronzes produced by the Thomire workshops in the first decades of the 19th century; tables and pedestal tables, chandeliers, candelabras, wall lights, centerpieces, clocks, andirons, mantelpieces, etc. Thomire produced massively and with a very high level of quality. It is an illustration of the excellence of French industry of this period, which was exported throughout Europe. Beautiful piece of furniture in very good condition, french polish cleaned and repolished by our cabinetmaker, original mercury-gilt bronzes with fresh gilding and no wear. Width: 111.5cm Height: 89.5cm Depth: 42.5cm