AN ORMOLU-MOUNTED CUT BRASS-INLAID RED TORTOISESHELL 'BOULLE' MARQUETRY CENTRE TABLE

This table is conceived in the South German 'Boulle' revival style of the mid-19th century, popularized by the celebrated Munich cabinetmaker Franz Xavier Fortner. Starting his Munich workshop in 1826, he worked in styles ranging from Neo-Gothic to Historicism, and continued the eighteenth-century Bavarian specialty of brass-inlaid furniture. By the mid-19th century, the Boulle revival fashion reached the court of Frederick William IV, and in 1859, he commissioned furniture for the Boulle Zimmer of the newly-built Orangerie located in the grounds of Schloss Sanssouci. For a table of this model centred by an identical roundel of cupid, engraved 'ZU SPAT', see Sotheby's, London, 29 October 1993, lot 34.