Adrian Alan
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A Fine Louis XVI Style Mahogany And Marquetry Centre Table With Gilt Bronze Mounts ( 1890 )
| Artists: |
FRANCOIS LINKE (1855-1946) |
| Dimensions: | 112.00cm wide 75.00cm high 65.00cm deep (44.09 inches wide 29.53 inches high 25.59 inches deep) |
| Description: |
The rectangular top with a central field of marquetry lattice enclosed by a wide entwined ribbon and foliate border with a gilt edge mount above a frieze with a projecting central tablet embellished with gilt bronze mounts depicting cherubs at play flanked by panels of foliate running pattern. The cabriole legs with gilt bronze mounts and sabots united by an interlaced stretcher surmounted by an open-work gilt bronze basket in the manner of Weisweiller.
François Linke was born in Pankratz in Bohemia in 1855 and arrived in Paris at the age of twenty. He died in Paris in 1946. He was the most important Paris cabinet-maker of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, and possibly the most sought after cabinet maker of this period. The quality of his craftsmanship was unsurpassed and was highlighted by his spectacular stand at the Paris Exhibition Universelle in 1900, where his Grand Bureau took a gold medal. The essential theme of his work was sculptural, in a modernised Louis XV style with a hint of the contemporary 'art nouveau', a large proportion of his work being directly inspired by Eighteenth Century examples. However, he was known for the high quality of his work, which had an individualism and inventiveness not matched by his contemporaries. All of Linke’s work has the finest, most lavish mounts - the technical brilliance of his work and the artistic change that it represented, was never to be repeated. |
| Literature: | Payne, Christopher: ‘François Linke, 1855-1946, The Belle Époque of French Furniture’, Antique Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge 2003. |
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