French Louis Philippe Style Dressing Table with Mirror and Drawers, 1870

Peculiar French walnut toilette in the Louis Philippe style; the upper top has a nice, soft molding, is hinged so that it can rise perpendicularly to the cabinet, and has a mirror inside; the faux drawer under the top is divided into convenient, deep compartments; there are also two other practical drawers equipped with a handle; the whole is supported by four “cabriole” legs joined at the bottom by a useful shelf. with this type of leg, the design becomes very pleasing, well-proportioned, and elegant. The entire piece of furniture was produced by applying differently colored walnut slabs to the surfaces, thus creating a pleasant and refined geometric design. So the most interesting and compelling feature of this object is the processing by which it was made: the “lastronatura.” The exact term is Italian “lastronatura” untranslatable into English, in fact, “lastronatura” is very different and older than “wood veneer”. This craft technique spread as early as the sixteenth century and remained unchanged until the mid-nineteenth century before the Industrial Revolution; it consisted of cutting tree trunks of noble wood (walnut, briar, feather, etc., by hand with saws. ) into many layers varying in thickness from 4 to 6 millimeters, which were then applied to furniture for decorative purposes; the finishing of this process was very complex: the layer of wood was treated with natural earth dissolved in water to the desired shade, it was antiqued with stone, fixed with shellac applied with a brush, and finally polishing was done in 12 passes with a cotton pad soaked in shellac, straw oil with pumice stone powder. Measures width cm.50, depth cm.41, height cm.76.