BY JOSEPH GENGENBACH, CALLED CANABAS AND PIERRE GARNIER, CIRCA 1775

Joseph Gengenbach called Canabas, maître in 1766.
Pierre Garnier, maître in 1742.

Pierre Garnier (c.1725-1806) was the son of the Parisian ébéniste François Garnier. Garnier le jeune received his maîtrise in 1742 at the early age of 16 and became one of the foremost ébénistes of the 1760s and 1770s, playing a key role in the development of the neoclassical goût grec style.

Joseph Gengenbach (c.1712-1797) was German, and arrived in Paris in 1745, working first for Jean-François Oeben and Pierre Migeon. Gengenbach, later called Canabas, specialized in small pieces of furniture, mainly utilitarian and practical pieces often of innovative design. His furniture was mainly executed in solid mahogany and typically maintained a clean line without the need for ormolu mounts.

This elegant little étagère is conceived in the sober, unadorned taste of the late 18th Century known as the goût anglais, using simple functional forms undisturbed by gilt-bronze mounts and often based directly on English prototypes.

The fashionable goût anglais of the 1770s and '80s was promoted by Madame de Pompadour's brother, the Marquis de Marigny, who greatly admired the simple forms and plain beauty of English mahogany furniture. Not only was he buying restrained mahogany pieces through an agent in London, but he was also commissioning furniture in a similar vein from his favoured ébénistes, for example the well known set of mahogany chairs showing a strong English influence, which were supplied by Pierre Garnier for the the dining room of his hôtel in the Place des Victoires in 1778 (A. Gordon and M. Déchery, 'The Marquis de Marigny's Purchases of English Furniture and Objects', Furniture History Society Journal, (XXV), 1989, pp. 86-108).