Style Louis XIV / Ref.12391

Henry DASSON, Pair of pedestal tables after WEISWEILER, circa 1886

These two pedestal tables were made by the cabinetmaker and bronze worker Henry Dasson around 1886, based on a model from around 1770 attributed to Adam Weisweiler. One of them is signed and dated.

Originally a bronze worker, Henry Dasson (1825-1896) began making furniture probably in 1871. He was considered one of the best cabinetmakers of his time. He was particularly renowned for his reproductions of Louis XV and Louis XVI period furniture, although he also created originals in the spirit of these styles.

The original model of this piece is attributed to Adam Weisweiler (1744-1820), a prestigious cabinetmaker of the late 18th century who made several of them. According to Alexander Payne in The Quintessence of Furniture in the 19^th Century, one of these pieces was sold to Countess Du Barry by Dominique Daguerre.

One of Weisweiler’s pedestal tables is kept in the collections of the Nissim de Camondo Museum. Furthermore, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris has a preparatory drawing for a pedestal table of this model intended for Count Skavronsky, the Russian ambassador to Naples.

Weisweiler’s furniture was among the most reproduced by the cabinetmakers of the 19^th century, with Dasson’s pedestal tables being considered the highest quality.

Our pedestal tables each rest on three pairs of columns made to imitate golden bronze bamboo stalks, joined at the lower part by a triangular stretcher with concave sides. These double columns end in a saber foot. Unlike most of Weisweiler’s pedestal tables of this model, these small tables do not have a small circular shelf fixed on the stretcher, giving them a more elongated appearance. The top features a porcelain plaque painted with a bouquet of flowers, surrounded by a circular band of amboyna burl for one; a porcelain plaque painted with a bouquet of varied and colorful flowers covering the entire top for the other.

The bamboo motif was used in the decorative arts both at the end of the 18^th century, with the fashion for chinoiseries, and at the end of the 19^th century, where it joined both the taste for style furniture and the vogue for Japonism, a movement that included a general fascination for artistic practices and motifs from the Far East.

Weisweiler’s pedestal tables were not the only pieces that interested Dasson. He also gave a version of a writing table in Japanese lacquer and ebony veneer that the latter had made in 1784 and delivered to the Crown Furniture Repository for Queen Marie Antoinette's private cabinet at the Château de Saint-Cloud. Proof of the success that period furniture had under the Second Empire, Empress Eugénie had acquired it for a very significant price. Thus, a century after its creation, in 1880, Dasson was able to reproduce this model while fitting into the fashion of the time. He recreated it in imitation of the original, with a Japanese lacquer plaque integrated into the top, but also in a simpler version, sold at Sotheby's in 2023.