R. Louis Bofferding Decorative and Fine Art

This mahogany commode has the fluted rails and canted corners typical of case furniture made along the coasts of the Baltic and North Seas around 1800. More difficult to pinpoint, however, is the exact place of its making, since this geographical region stretches from Germany to Russia, and north from Poland to Scandinavia. That said, a strikingly similar, if slightly plainer commode in a private German collection bears an old paper label that identifies it as having been made in the city of Altona. It also bears the seal of King Christian VII of Denmark who reigned until 1808. At the time, Altona was in the independent Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, located between Denmark and Prussia. Both nations tried to annex the Duchy, and in 1848 it was ceded to Prussia, which became part of Germany in 1871. A North Sea port, Altona was a member of the Hanseatic League, an association of seaports that was established in the 14th century to foster trade and police the high seas. Around 1800, the aforementioned King Christian of Denmark, who was also the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, allowed Jews to freely settle in Altona to increase the tax base. This allowed them to conduct business in neighboring Hamburg, a larger financial hub that maintained quotas. The prosperous Jewish families of Altona built villas there, and decorated them with furnishings that were made locally and imported. Many of those makers owned copies of furniture-pattern books, which were widely disseminated among these seaports, accounting for the difficulty in determining if a piece was made in Altona, Stockholm, or St. Petersburg. We can’t trace our commode to a Danish king or a known Altona merchant, but we can link it to the New World empire builders...

The so-called Bilbao mirrors were made circa 1800 in Portugal and Spain and named after the city where many were crafted. On our shores they’re often mis...

This trompe l'oeil drawing depicts the artist's tools -- a black and a red crayon, and a folding steel ruler that was painted with silver pigments, which have blackened with age. They're shown on a sheaf of papers that include a medieval manuscript page, a musical score, and a group of prints. The unifying theme is the artistic patronage of the Medici, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, who intermarried with the Habsburgs, who were the Holy Roman Emperors. Among the papers are prints by Stefano Della Bella, the Florentine artist who worked for the Medici. They depict a negro page with a horse, and portraits of Lorenzo Lippi...

This Empire ormolu head of a woman was made as a furniture mount in France around 1810, and probably adorned a bed. In any case, closer to our own time, it was deemed worthy of mount...

This large and dramatic blown and cast-glass candlestick, with a blue-and-white spiral in its stem, was most likely made in England around 1800. It comes from the collection of the legendary aesthete Baron Max Fould-Springer, who lived at the Palais de Royaumont outside Paris, which on his death was inherited by his sister Liliane, Baroness de Rothschild...

This cylinder box is an exceptionally fine example of straw marquetry, and a rare survivor of the craft, which involves the cutting, coloring, and mounting of split straws to form de...