Secretary desk, decorated with flowering stems in violet tip - Lot 151

Secretary desk, decorated with flowering stems in violet tip wood on frieze rosewood backgrounds, opening with a flap and two leaves. The interior reveals six drawers, three compartments and a shelf. The lower part features a shelf and two compartments. The straight uprights, rounded at the front, rest on small cambered feet. Chased and gilded bronze trim: lock escutcheons, falls and sabots. Breche d'Alep marble top with corbin. Stamped P. ROUSSEL. Pierre ROUSSEL (1723-1782) Cite maitre in 1745 and JME (on the front crosspiece) Paris. Louis XV period H_140 cm W_103 cm D_42 cm Slight lifting and missing decoration. Damage to the flap compass fastenings. Pierre Roussel was a cabinetmaker and merchant. He married at the age of twenty and was awarded his master's degree two years later. He was based in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, rue de Charenton, under the sign of l'Image de Saint Pierre. By the 1760s, his trade had become very prosperous. From 1775 to 1780, he worked concurrently with Leleu, for the Prince de Condé, to whom he delivered a total of 10,000 livres worth of furniture. Most of the pieces were in rosewood, satinwood or amaranth marquetry, with floral, landscape or geometric decorations. A good number of pieces were in lacquer, some in "lac rouge" and others in "verni moderne". In 1787, the Roussel workshop supplied the Garde-Meuble Royal with a mahogany desk at a cost of 360 L, destined for the library of the Countess of Provence in Versailles. At the same time, he supplied the Dowager Duchess of Arenberg with some furniture for her hotel on rue de la Ville-l'Évêque. The after-death inventory, undertaken in March 1783, is particularly interesting, as it describes a very large stock of two hundred and fifty pieces of furniture, valued at between L50 and L560 each. It also lists among the creditors the names of the bronzemakers Turchin (for L482) and Ravrio (for L205), and the gilder Trufot (for L900). Expert: Cabinet Stéphane Pépe SALE BY DESIGNATION: stored and available for collection at 17 bis rue de Chevignerot 21200 Beaune