Maison Marnyhac Center Tables

A Napoleon III gilt-bronze and onyx centre table, By Maison Marnyhac, Paris. Signed to the edge of the stretcher 'MAISON MARNYHAC 1. RUE DE LA PAIX PARIS'. This opulent centre table has a beautifully patterned onyx top inset within stiff-leaf cast gilt-bronze border and guilloche patterned frieze. The legs modelled as female terms with arms crossed and holding atop their heads flower filled baskets. The lower part of the legs are formed as tapering pilasterrs joined by an elaborate loop stretcher with central platform. France, Circa 1865 This table is exemplary of the finest luxury furniture made during the opulent Second Empire period. The use of Algerian onyx-marble is especially indicative of this period as it was not until the 1840s that the quarries near Constantine in Algeria, then under French rule, which had been abandoned since antiquity, were rediscovered. Alphonse Pallu et Cie presented the stone at the Exhibition of Algerian Products in Paris in 1860 and established the Compagnie des Marbres Onyx...