Antique French Boulle Cut Brass Inlaid Inkstand c.1840

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Antique French Boulle Cut Brass Inlaid Inkstand c.1840

About the Item

This is a lovely antique French coromandel wood and cut brass Boulle work ink stand, circa 1840 in date and made in the manner of George Bullock. The encrier comprises two glass inkwells with a sunken well with a lid. The set features exquisite hand cut brass Boulle marquetry of foliage and scrolling decorations, and it stands on squat bun feet. This is a really beautiful object which when placed on a lovely desk is sure to attract a lot of attention. Condition: In excellent condition having been beautifully restored in our workshops, please see photos for confirmation. Dimensions in cm: Height 9 x Width 34.5 x Depth 24.5 Dimensions in inches: Height 3.5 x Width 13.6 x Depth 9.6 André-Charles Boulle (1642 – 1732), was the French cabinetmaker who is generally considered to be the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry. His fame in marquetry led to his name being given to a fashion of inlaying known as Boulle (or in 19th-century Britain, Buhl work). Boulle appears to have been originally a painter, since the first payment to him by the crown of which there is any record (1669) specifies ouvrages de peinture. He was employed for many years at Versailles, where the mirrored walls, the floors of wood mosaic, the inlaid paneling and the marquetery furniture in the Cabinet du Dauphin were regarded as his most remarkable work. These rooms were long since dismantled and their contents dispersed, but Boulle's drawings for the work are in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. His royal commissions were numerous, as we learn both from the Comptes des B timents du Roi and from the correspondence of Louvois. Not only the most magnificent of French monarchs, but foreign princes and the great nobles and financiers of his own country crowded to him with commissions, and the mot of the abbé de Marolles, Boulle y lourne en ovale, has become a stock quotation in the literature of French cabinetmaking. George Bullock (ca. 1777-1818) was a sculptor and furniture maker from Liverpool.George Bullock was born in Birmingham, where his mother ran an exhibition of wax models in the late 1790s. His brother, William Bullock, opened a museum of curiosities in the city in 1800. He moved it to Liverpool the next year, and George went with him. By 1804, George Bullock had left his brother's museum, and gone into business with a looking-glass maker called William Stoakes. They advertised themselves as "Cabinet Makers, General Furnishers and Marble Workers", trading from a showroom called the "Grecian Rooms" in Bold Street, Liverpool. Around 1806, Bullock dissolved his partnership with Stoakes and took over the Mona marble quarries at Llanvechell on the island of Anglesey for a lease of £1000. The marble was shipped to Liverpool, where it was used for chimneypieces and other decorations. He used it widely in his furnishing schemes, such as the refurbishment of Thomas Johnes’ house at Hafod. He also supplied marble to other sculptors.[1] At about this time, a guide to Liverpool described his Grecian Rooms as offering "an extensive assortment of elegant and fashionable furniture; as also, statues, figures, tripods, candelabra, antique lamps, sphinxes, griffins, &c., in marble, bronze, and artificial stone." Bullock also stocked "a good collection of ancient and modern busts; among the latter, those of many of the most distinguished characters in Liverpool and its neighbourhood, modelled by himself."[2] Following the success of his company he moved to London in 1813, becoming director of the company. These marbles were used in the monuments to the Rev Glover Moore in St Cuthbert's in Halsall, Lancashire, and to Anna Maria Bold in St Luke's in Farnworth, Lancashire. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and the Liverpool Academy between 1804 and 1816. He was the President of the Liverpool Academy in 1810 and 1811. He also undertook commissions for his furniture designs, notably for Sir Walter Scott and for the government, to provide furnishings for Napoleon's exile on St. Helena. Coromandel wood or Calamander wood is a valuable wood from India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. It is of a hazel-brown color, with black stripes (or the other way about), very heavy and hard. It is also known as Macassar Ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from different species in the same genus; one of these is Diospyros quaesita Thwaites, from Sri Lanka. The name Calamander comes from the local sinhalese name, 'kalu-medhiriya', which means dark chamber; referring to the characteristic ebony black wood. Coromandel wood has been logged to extinction over the last 2 to 3 hundred years and is no longer available for new work in any quantity. Furniture in coromandel is so expensive and so well looked after that even recycling it is an unlikely source. A substitute, Macassar Ebony, has similar characteristics and to the untrained eye is nearly the same but it lacks the depth of colour seen in genuine Coromandel.

Place of Origin:
France
Period:
1840-1849
Date of Manufacture:
c.1840
Condition:
Seller Location:
London, GB
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU95061417212