Louis XV Boulle Style Bureau de Plat

PRESENTING A LOVELY Louis XV Boulle Style Bureau de Plat.

This is a desk or Bureau de Plat in the classic Boulle and Louis XV Styles.

Not an antique and probable made circa 2000 in Italy.

The ormolu mounts are of very good quality and detail.

Made of fine mahogany, the desk sits on 4 cabriolet legs with ormolu mount on the toes and neoclassical ormolu Goddess on each knee.

The front of the desk has 3 drawers, separated by a floral ormolu mount, and each has a panel of faux ‘Boulle inlay’ of brass and painted faux tortoiseshell underneath. This inlay is replicated on the sides and back.

The desk top has an ormolu medallion on each corner and faux ‘Boulle inlay’ of brass and painted faux tortoiseshell underneath all around the outside of the desk top with a red Moroccan leather desktop insert with gold stencil edging.

In excellent condition. The leather insert is near mint and the ormolu mounts still bright and shiny gold !

THIS DESK CERTAINLY HAS ‘THE LOOK’ !

André-Charles Boulle (11 November 1642 – 29 February 1732), le joailler du meuble (the “furniture jeweller”), became the most famous French cabinetmaker and the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry, also known as “inlay“. Boulle was “the most remarkable of all French cabinetmakers”.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) recommended him to Louis XIV of France, the “Sun King” (r. 1643–1715), as “the most skilled craftsman in his profession“. Over the centuries since his death, his name and that of his family has become associated with the art he perfected, the inlay of tortoiseshell, brass and pewter into ebony. It has become known as Boulle Work, and the École Boulle (founded in 1886), a college of fine arts and crafts and applied arts in Paris, continues today to bear testimony to his enduring art, the art of inlay.