A FRENCH ORMOLU-MOUNTED KINGWOOD, TULIPWOOD, AND BOIS SATINEE PARQUETRY CENTRE-TABLE

This exceptional table is a reproduction of the celebrated model by Adam Weisweiler (d. 1820), delivered in 1784 by the Parisian marchand-mercier Daguerre to the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne. It was placed in Marie-Antoinette's cabinet intérieur at Château de Saint-Cloud and was subsequently gifted 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, it was placed in her salon bleu at the Tuileries, where she gave her audiences.
Influencing fashion as she had a century earlier, Marie-Antoinette was again à la mode during the last quarter of the 19th century. Her table was reproduced by a number of preeminent ebénistes who specialized in meubles de style, including Alfred-Emannuel-Louis Beurdeley, Henry Dasson, François Linke and Théodore Millet.