Of rectangular form, with inset leather top above a pair of paneled frieze drawers with bead-and-reel surround and inlaid with Greek key, interspersed with square patterae, the reverse with sham drawers and the ends similarly decorated and with pull-out leather-lined writing slides, on tapering square legs headed by guttae, with square sabots, stamped J.L. COSSON, JME and I. DUBOIS to the right underside
30 in. (76 cm.) high, 49 in. (124.5 cm.) wide, 24 in. (61 cm.) deep

Segoura; Christie's, New York, 19 October 2006, lot 115.

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Lot Essay

Jacques-Laurent Cosson, maître in 1765.

The Dubois stamp is presumably that of René Dubois, maître in 1755.

With its Greek key frieze decoration this bureau plat reflects the style introduced in the 1750s by the architect Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1714-1759). Probably working in collaboration with a marchand-mercier such as Simon-Philippe Poirier, Le Lorrain's goût Grec style was first realized in the designs for the celebrated suite of furniture supplied for the Parisian hôtel of the amateur Ange-Laurent Lalive de Jully circa 1755, which included the bureau plat and cartonnier now in the Musée Condé at Chantilly (S. Eriksen, Early neo-classicism in France, London 1974, figs. 85-89.)
René Dubois was the son of the well-known ébéniste Jacques Dubois (1694-1763) at whose death he took over the workshop, continuing to use his father's stamp. He had already become a maître-ébéniste in 1755 and obviously worked with his father from then on, presumably introducing a more up-to-date manner in the workshop. The inventory taken at the death of Jacques Dubois lists une table de bois d'amarante àla grecque, which probably describes a table related to the present one or to the well-documented group of bureaux àla grecque by René Dubois and Philippe-Claude Montigny (see A. Pradère, Les Ebénistes Français de Louis XIV à la Révolution, Paris, 1989, p. 300).