1775
A Louis XVI Ormolu Mounted Boxwood, and Parquetry Bureau Plat Attributed to Mathieu Cramer
With a green-tooled leather top above two frieze drawers and opposing sham drawers, with slide at one end, with red-painted Wrightsman inventory number 192. This elegant bureau plat, with its trellis pattern marquetry and legs inlaid with husk pendants, relates to a group of furniture by or attributed to Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer. A smaller example sold from the collection of Bernice and Edgar Garbisch, Sotheby’s, New York, 17 May 1980, lot 322, and a related example sold from the collection of Jaime Ortiz-Patiño, Sotheby’s, New York, 20 May 1992, lot 89. As with the present example, they are unsigned but attributed to Cramer. Cramer was known for using the trellis pattern enclosing quatrefoils and legs inlaid with husk pendants, such as on a bonheur du jour signed M. G. CRAMER, illustrated in C. Packer, Paris Furniture, 1956, fig. 221.
A nearly identical bureau plat with its matching cartonnier is in the Ministre de la Marine, Paris. A further almost identical bureau plat, formerly in the collection of Sir Antony de Rothschild, was sold from the estate of the Hon. Mrs. Yorke, Christie’s, London, 5 May 1927, lot 132.
Provenance:
Acquired from Jacques Seligmann, Paris via Rosenberg and Stiebel, New York, 1957.
Mrs Jayne Wrightsman
Literature:
F.J.B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection, vol. II, Greenwich, 1966, p. 302, no. 149.
Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer, maître in 1773.
The inventory of Mathieu William Cramer workshop, drawn up after the death of his wife in 1783, gives a picture of a relatively large production at the time, since it contained no less than five premises. It describes more than two hundred pieces of furniture, in varying degrees of finish. The accounts show that Cramer resold some of the furniture made by his colleagues, including R.V.L.C., Petit, Roussel, Topino, Vassou, Ancellet, Canabas, Dautriche and Feuerstein. He originally came from an area north of the Rhine and moved to Paris where he worked as a free worker in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, before being received in the Guild in 1771. A few years later, he acquired a workshop in the Rue du Bac and built up a business with private clients. In 1790 he was forced to close his business due to financial difficulties, even though he had a stock of merchandise with a value of 15,000 livres. He died in 1804.
Measurements
| Dimensions | CM | Inches |
|---|---|---|
| Width: | 129 | 51 |
| Depth: | 64 | 25 |
| Height: | 73.5 | 29 |