3details

Art & Design - Peter Woodward

Cabinet furniture, desks etc.

Gillows style kidney shaped desk

A Victorian burr walnut kidney-shaped desk in the manner of Gillows. The top with a tooled leather inset and three-quarter pierced brass gallery the three frieze drawers above two banks of four graduated drawers with replacement brass ring handles, the reverse with an open recess enclosing two fixed shelves, on a moulded plinth.
England circa 1850 

Provenance: the estate of Hope Gimbel Solinger, New York

Daughter of Saks Fifth Avenue and Gimbels department store founder, once married to David Solinger, lawyer, art collector, and president of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

 

Marble topped side cabinet by Léon Dromard

A French Napoleon III ormolu-mounted rosewood and coromandel side cabinet by Léon Dromard, Paris. A red Languedoc marble top above a case set with two panelled doors decorated with a Chinese palace scenes, opening to reveal a single adjustable shelf, raised on spirally-fluted “torsade” bronze feet, the carcass stamped under the front feet ‘L. DROMARD/PARIS’

Provenance: Private collection Marseille, Maple & co Garde-Meuble paper label to the underside of the marble inscribed in ink “m. l’Amiral Battet 15-2-45”  probably Admiral Robert Battet (1893-1950) Chefs d’état-major de la marine (The Chief of the Staff of the French Navy)

Léon Dromard, Cabinetmaker in Paris, first known as a restorer of antique furniture and furniture hardware. From 1874 at 18 rue Saint Lazare in Paris. When he ceased trading a sale took place of furniture of art, seats and bronzes at Drouot on 11 and 12 April 1889.

brass and steel desk by Maison Jansen

Maison Jansen  brass and steel desk, silver and gold patina with a rectangular mirrored top resting on a cylindrical X-frame base connected by a stretcher. Stamped “Jansen, 9 Rue Royale” France circa 1970

 

Maison Jansen was a Paris-based interior decoration office founded in 1880 by Dutch-born Jean-Henri Jansen. Jansen is considered the first truly global design firm, serving clients in Europe, Latin America, North America and the Middle East. 

Throughout the firm’s history, it employed a traditional style drawing upon European design, but with the influence of contemporary trends and materials.
Maison Jansen provided services to the royal families of Belgium, Iran, and Serbia; Elsie de Wolfe, and Lady Olive Baillie’s Leeds Castle in Kent, England.
The firm’s most published work was a project by Stephane Boudin and Paul Manno, the head of Jansen’s New York office, for the U.S. White House during the administration of John F. Kennedy. The White House Red Room was redecorated by Stéphane Boudin. Boudin furnished the room primarily in the American Empire style with many pieces by the cabinetmaker Charles-Honoré Lannuier. 

rare Louis Vuitton drawer trunk circa 1908

rare Malle à Portes ou à tiroirs by Louis Vuitton

An original, rare Louis Vuitton drawer trunk in monogram canvas, France circa 1908 in good vintage condition

 

Trains and steamships transformed transportation in the mid 19th century, opening the world up to a new breed of traveler. Louis Vuitton understood the need for more practical luggage, and strove to create products that were adaptable to all situations and the travel trunk was born.

In 1854 Vuitton opened his own trunk-making firm in Paris. His first trunks were lightweight and airtight, with flat tops to facilitate stacking. They were wooden frames covered in gray “Trianon” canvas.

Louis Vuitton trunks were soon very popular and, like today, often copied. The company had to keep changing its signature pattern due to copycats. The trademark brown and beige stripes debuted in 1876, twenty years later, the “Monogram” pattern was unveiled, with the familiar “LV” monogram plus four-lobed flowers ‘borrowed’ from the Japanese visual culture that was so fashionable in the late 19th century.