AFTER THE MODEL BY ADAM WEISWEILER, CIRCA 1880

This fine japanned dressing-table is a copy of the celebrated model by Adam Weisweiler (1744-1820), delivered in 1784 by the famous Parisian marchand-mercier Daguerre to the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, at a cost of 3260 livres. It was placed in Marie-Antoinette's Cabinet Intérieur at the Château de Saint-Cloud. She subsequently gave it to her close friend Madame de Polignac. Having been sold after the revolution, the Weisweiler table was discovered in a marchand's shop on the Quai Voltaire in 1840 by the Prince de Beauvau (d. 1864). Purchased by the Empress Eugénie at auction the year after his death, she placed it in her salon bleu at the Tuileries where she gave her audiences. As her purchase demonstrates, Eugénie was an avid collector of Louis XVI items, particularly if they had been owned by Queen Marie-Antoinette. The table is now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Influencing fashion as she did, Marie-Antoinette's model of table was again à la mode during the late 19th century, and a number of Parisian cabinet-makers who specialised in meubles de style produced copies and simplified versions of it including Paul Sormani, Alfred Beurdeley and an example by Henry Dasson recently sold Christie's, New York, 21 October 2010, lot 320 ($158,500). One example was exhibited by the Maison Fourdinois at the Exposition des arts du bois organised in 1882 by the Union centrale des Arts Décoratifs.