Modèles de meubles et de décorations intérieures: pour l'ameublement, tels que tables, secrétaires, commodes, bureaux, miroirs, jardiniéres, fauteuils, chaises, lits, alcoves, draperies de croisées, etc.

Abstract

First edition. A very rare work, published in connection with the French national industrial exhibition of 1827. As interesting as that association is, however, the major attraction of this rare work is as a pattern book of neo-classical furniture and interiors. The designs are wide-ranging and include vases, gueridons, console and centre tables, various elegant beds with elaborate canopies, classical chairs, stools, day beds, a wide variety of window draperies, neo-classical mantels, mirrors, elegant cradles, bureaus and desks, chiffoniers, etc. etc. Little is known about Lorenzo Santi (1783-1839). He was an Italian designer who worked in Rome with his brother Dionisio. The brothers had a high reputation; the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon, ordered from them seventy pieces of furniture about 1805. This furniture was dispersed in 1816. It was perhaps this patronage, or perhaps the participation of Santi in the French industrial fairs, which were held in the Louvre in 1819 and 1827, which induced the publisher Bance to issue this book of his designs. Bance had already published the Modeles d’Orfeverie in 1822, the pieces chosen and engraved by Louise-Charlotte Soyer. He commissioned her to engrave the plates for the present book, which is presented by the editor as “le complement indispensable des cinq autres...relatif, soit aux objets de gout, dans le style antique soit aus Modeles d’Orfeverie, de Menuiserie, et de Serrurerie.” There was apparently no Italian edition of Santi’s designs; this is thus the first and only edition. The work is also of interest in that the plates were engraved by a woman; there were few female engravers in the early 19th century. (Charles Wood, cat. 167, # 60)