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Lot Essay
This important bureau Mazarin has a hinged top enclosing a writing surface and thereby is also a bureau brisé. It shows an interesting contrast between the rich première partie Boulle marquetry to the exterior and the sober tortoiseshell veneer to the interior. The present lot relates to a similarly decorated bureau in the Wrightsman collection, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The latter is slightly earlier in date and has square-sectioned straight legs, however, both display the same architectural upper sections.
The present lot also relates to a group of bureaux Mazarin, which includes a desk in the Victoria & Albert Museum (illustrated in O. Brackett, Catalogue of the Jones Collection, London, 1922, no. 4), one formerly in the Rosebery collection, sold from Mentmore, 18 May 1977, lot 125, and a third in the Royal collections (illustrated in H. Clifford Smith, Buckingham Palace: Its Furniture, Decoration & History, London, 1931, no 211).
The present lot also relates to a group of bureaux Mazarin, which includes a desk in the Victoria & Albert Museum (illustrated in O. Brackett, Catalogue of the Jones Collection, London, 1922, no. 4), one formerly in the Rosebery collection, sold from Mentmore, 18 May 1977, lot 125, and a third in the Royal collections (illustrated in H. Clifford Smith, Buckingham Palace: Its Furniture, Decoration & History, London, 1931, no 211).