A Desk Fit For An Emperor
Tuesday 16th April 2024. Starts at 10:00am
To view the sale including the desk click here
A Desk Fit For an Emperor
Our April Collections and Fine Furniture Sale will feature an important and well-travelled Louis XVI bureau plat which was originally the working desk of the French Emperor Napoleon III. This beautiful desk veneered in rosewood and amaranth and with mercury gilded ormolu mounts was almost certainly made by Claude-Charles Saunier in c.1780-85, a very similar example can be seen in the Musee Nissim de Camondo in Paris.
The desk became part of the Royal Collection or Garde-Meuble during the Restoration c.1820 and can be traced back to 1858 when it appears in an inventory at the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz, the holiday home of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie.
When the Second Empire was overthrown after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III and Eugenie took permanent refuge in England and settled at Camden Place in Chislehurst Kent. Napoleon III died in 1873 and their son tragically died in 1879 while fighting in the Zulu War. Eugenie then moved to Farnborough Hill in 1880 and transferred the contents of the Villa Eugenie to Farnborough in 1881. The desk is next recorded in the sale of the contents of the house undertaken by Hampton & Sons in 1927. Lot 265 it was listed as ‘A Louis XVI library table, From the Royal mobilier’ it fetched 340gns one of the highest prices in the auction. It was purchased by a Parisian dealer a certain Martin Bacris who the following year exhibited the desk at Malmaison in Paris along with 158 other items from the Empress’s collection under the title ‘Exposition de Napoleon 1er A Napoleon III, Souvenirs de la Famille Imperiale, Conserves Par L’imperatrice Eugenie Dans Sa Residence de Farnborough et Provenant de sa Succession’. The table stood pride of place at the exhibition and was subsequently sold, probably to grace a Rothschild Collection.
The desk was then acquired by the current vendor in 1972 from an antiques dealer in Geneva and has been residing back in Hampshire for the last 50 years. It will be coming up for auction on the 16th April and has a guide price of £80,000-120,000.