Restoration of a Regency commode, probably from the South East of France, veneered with yew, plum, rosewood, walnut, cherry, amaranth, violet wood, boxwood and green-stained maple on a resinous frame.
Besides its very unusual marquetry decoration, the distinctive feature of this chest of drawers comes from its crowned R bronzes.
The hallmark with the crowned R
Not to be confused with the hallmark with the crowned C, corresponding to a tax levied from 1745 to 1749 on copper objects and found on many bronze furniture pieces of that period, there is a more enigmatic hallmark composed of an R surmounted by a crown.
This mark is most often found on Louis XIV and Regency style objects, mainly on everyday or even rustic household utensils, in brass or copper, but also on candlesticks and on bronze furniture.
Unlike the crowned C, it does not appear that the crowned R corresponds to a tax hallmark, but rather, according to JC Renard, based on the edict of 1745, he indicates that the crowned R could be a hallmark reserved for second-hand items or a hallmark reserved for the provinces.
The crowned R hallmark would therefore be a mark of quality of alloy and manufacture applied by the master wardens of the corporation on the copper objects they controlled in certain provinces, by virtue of the statute specific to the corporation and this during the first decades of the 18th century.
Bibliography
- L Moor, The crowned R hallmark, The stamp / the Art Object n°342 – December 1999, pp. 76-82.
- JC Renard, Les cuivres cuisine, Edition de l'Amateur, 1997.
State of affairs report
This chest of drawers was in good structural condition. There were, of course, some missing veneers and occasional areas of detachment.
The Restoration
The restoration work consisted of replacing the missing veneer with a piece of veneer that was sawn, scraped, and sanded, then cut to the correct thickness as a backing before being glued with hot glue. All the veneered surfaces were then re-glued and rehydrated by infiltration with glue and placed under pressure with a slight application of heat (40°C).
The old varnish was then stripped with a product suitable for furniture restoration, and a colorless French polish was applied. The bronzes were cleaned with an agar-agar gel and a complexing agent, and then protected with a microcrystalline wax.
