This low bookcase in rosewood with figures of philosophers was made by cabinetmaker Louis-Édouard Lemarchand around 1850.

Louis-Édouard Lemarchand (Paris, 1795-1872) was the son of Charles-Joseph Lemarchand (1759-1826), who founded a dynasty of cabinetmakers. He studied architecture and spent two years in the Empire. Under the Restoration, he returned to Paris to help his father in the workshop. Their cabinetmaking business took off. In 1817, they became Fournisseur Breveté du Garde-Meuble. Active under Charles X, Louis Philippe and then Napoleon III, Lemarchand fils continued to use his father's stamp, deleting the initial of the first name. It was he who executed Napoleon I's coffin in 1840. In 1846, he formed a partnership with André Lemoyne; when he retired, the business was continued by the Lemoynes, until it was taken over by Charles Jeanselme in 1893.

The format of this bookcase means it can be placed under windows, in a bright room, ideal for reading.

Above a long, solid plinth, five glazed openings open out; the two side doors operate in pairs, while the central door has a single leaf. The arch above the openings is adorned at the top with a shell surrounded by darker wood foliage. The corners of the cabinet are beveled and feature two carved atlatls representing literary figures. On the right, the man depicted as a thinker is Socrates; on the left is another writer, looking worried, holding a roll of papers in his hand. This iconography is particularly well suited to library furniture.

The atlantes adorning the corners of the dresser are particularly characteristic of Lemarchand's art, which he used in a variety of formulas on a relatively large number of works. This is the case of a cabinet sold at Tajan in 2016, richly carved in the corners and on the top.