A REGENCY ORMOLU-MOUNTED, BRASS-INLAID AND CALAMANDER CROSSBANDED ROSEWOOD SOFA TABLE

This elegant table typifies the revived taste for Boulle furniture among English cognoscenti of the 1820's as popularized by such influential collectors as the Prince Regent, later George IV, and William Beckford. The demand for Boulle furniture (or 'Buhl', as it was known) was catered to by a range of antiquarian dealers in London who not only dealt in old furniture but would also adapt 18th century Boulle pieces, or even make examples in the Boulle style. Such dealers and cabinet-makers included Louis le Gaigneur, who termed himself a 'French Buhl Manufacturer' and worked almost exclusively for George IV and his circle, the firm of Town and Emmanuel of 103 Bond St, 'Manufacturers of Buhl Marqueterie' and Thomas Parker of Air St., Piccadilly, who in 1813 supplied a pair of Boulle marquetry coffers-on-stands to the Prince Regent which remain in the British Royal Collection.