2-755-814 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Metal fittings, France and Germany, 18th century, (1898). 'Figs 1-15: Metal mountings from casts in the collection of plaster casts in the Royal Technical Institute, Stuttgart....Here especially the great talent of Charles Cressent celebrated as sculptor, carver, and cabinet-maker comes into play, and his versatility was so great that he could impart to his work a uniform and very unusual charm...In the same way we find Jacques Caffieri, the famous sculptor, founder, and carver, at work on bronzes which he very tastefully applied to furniture, - probably in conjunction with Jean-François Oeben, the court cabinet-maker. The figures of our plate show a collection of bronze furniture mountings of the time of Louis XVI [c1774-1792], a time in which we are accustomed to see delicate decorations of a fanciful taste. To this period belongs the ornament in which swags and ribbons, doves, quivers, torches, and all kinds of trophies, are mingled into an agreeable and symbolic whole'. Plate 86 from "The Historic Styles of Ornament" translated from the German of H. Dolmetsch. [B.T. Batford, London, 1898]