Decorator, Furniture, Les Collections, Celebres, D'Oeuvres D'Art, Console Et Miroir, XVII Siecle, From the Collection de M Spitzer, Plate 44, 1864

Date: 1864

Engraver: Delatre

Published by Goupil and Co, Editors, in Paris

Paper Size: 445 x 305mm

Print Size: 315 x 205mm

Condition: Good

Technique: Copperplate Engraving, later hand colouring

Price: $200

Description: 

THE ENSEMBLE is so self-explanatory that we have only to insist on the incredible skill of the chisel which excavated this wood. A goldsmith's chisel does not attack gold with greater sharpness and breadth. The rushes which form the baskets are openwork, and in these very baskets one can make out a few forgotten leaves, and one counts the stems of roses, tulips, anemones, carnations, and lilacs, which fill them. Nothing is more supple than bindweed and jasmine which cascade down and form what painters call "lightness." The petal of the flower is by turn velvety or lustrous, & you can count the veins on the leaf & the ribs on the bud. The plinth, which reigns at the top with a slight relief & repeats the pattern of the baguette which runs around the bevel, is of a strength of composition & design that is sufficient to classify this console & this mirror among the objects of decorative art. the best designed & the most serious