Candlestand and holder (guéridon)

This small table with two oval trays and two gilt-bronze candle arms on an adjustable steel shaft is supported by a circular pillar resting on three splayed, shaped legs. The upper tray is mounted with a porcelain plaque painted with nine posies of flowers on a white ground within an oval gold-tooled frame surrounded by a gilt-bronze molding chased with laurel leaves and berries and surmounted with an openwork gallery. The lower tray is veneered with marquetry of arabesques surrounded by a plain gilt-bronze molding with an openwork gallery of different design. The pillar is veneered with tulipwood in a continuous corkscrew pattern. The hub is mounted with three gilt-bronze acanthus rosettes above and below two gilt-bronze collars. The feet terminate in gilt-bronze scrolled acanthus shoes. Martin Carlin made a number of very similar guéridons for the dealers Simon-Philippe Poirier and Dominique Daguerre, who virtually monopolized the purchase of Sèvres plaques for mounting on furniture. Representative works in public collections are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art(1) and Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire.(2) The present piece incorporates one of two “plaques ovales percées” that Poirier and Daguerre purchased from Sèvres for 66 livres each in the first half of 1776.(3) The other work bought at the same time, also painted by Nicquet, decorates the Waddesdon guéridon. The guéridon first appeared in France in the mid-seventeenth century as a small stand or table used to support a candlestick or candelabrum. In the mid-eighteenth century it acquired the refinement of movable candle arms on an attached adjustable shaft. It served as a work or reading table and was also known as a serviteur-fidèle (faithful servant).

Catalogue entry from: William Rieder. The Robert Lehman Collection. Decorative Arts, Vol. XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 282-283.

NOTES:
1. Rieder, William. France, 1700 – 1800. Guides to European Decorative Arts 3. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 1984, pp. 16 – 17 (two works formerly in the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan).
2. Bellaigue, Geoffrey de. Furniture, Clocks and Gilt Bronzes. 2 vols. The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor. Fribourg, 1974, vol. 1, pp. 378 – 81, no. 77, where several other works from private collections are cited. See also F. J. B. Watson. Louis XVI Furniture. London, 1960, p. 131, no. 127, fig. 127; Pradere, Alexandre. French Furniture Makers: The Art of the Ébéniste from Louis XIV to the Revolution. London, 1989. [Translation of Les ébénistes français: De Louis XIV a la Révolution. Paris, 1989.], pp. 358 – 59, ill. no. 425.
3. Archives de Sèvres, VY 6 fo.103v; cited in Bellaigue, vol. 1, p. 380.

Audrey Kilvert Taylor, Paris; Crown Prince Umberto of Italy; [Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York]. Acquired by Robert Lehman through Rosenberg & Stiebel in January 1960.