La Rochelle chest of drawers in "Isles wood"«

A look back at the restoration of this rare port chest of drawers made from solid woods brought back from both the Orient and the West Indies and combining four precious woods: mahogany, satinwood, Palo Santo, ebony and finally and mainly a fifth wood, Royal ebony.

This commode opens with three wide drawers in three rows of Palo Santo wood interspersed with Ceylon ebony crossbars and is topped with a solid framed top composed of parquet flooring primarily enlivened by Royal ebony crossbars on a mahogany ground (some sections speckled or pommeled) with two satinwood edges. The four uprights, recessed with molding and punctuated by scroll feet, are also of solid Royal ebony, the two front uprights displaying the finest carvings, as do the four side panels interspersed with Ceylon ebony crossbars.
The drawers are adorned with chased and gilded Louis XV style drawer pulls and keyhole escutcheons.
The drawer boxes are made of alder and the back of fir, these second-use woods chosen for their lightness, and we note the absence of intermediate floors, this most likely to avoid further increasing the weight of this piece of furniture, which is made up of 90% of its composition from the three heaviest woods in the world. Indeed, although mahogany is renowned as a heavy wood, its density is only between 0.73 and 0.76, while guaiac, ebony and satinwood are among the only woods whose density is greater than 1 (between 1.17 and 1.33 for guaiac, certainly the heaviest wood in the world, between 0.95 and 1.10 for Asian ebony, woods less heavy however than those of Africa which are the only ones to approach the density of guaiac, between 1 and 1.10 for satinwood, wood whose weight is generally unknown due to its lack of knowledge in solid form).

A brief history of these woods and their uses

In 17th-century French ports along the Atlantic coast, timbers from the islands were initially used for ship repair. Later, billets brought back by sailors and merchants were entrusted to shipwrights and carpenters who developed the first techniques for cutting and shaping these woods. Cabinetmakers, not always familiar with the techniques used in their work, adapted naval methods to create furniture, sometimes entirely demountable, for use both at sea and on land. The adaptation of tools, through the development of hardened irons specifically designed for these wood species, became widespread. The planing of the panels was rather basic, even somewhat crude. The earliest evidence of using these woods is found in the use of timbers that had been resold or repurposed. These were woods that had previously served as shipbuilding timbers, such as courbaril and mahogany, and occasionally in architectural applications. Resale or reuse timber is that which comes from the dismantling of a ship. It is planned according to the «"Decrees of the King's Council" of March 26, 1691 and November 27, 1693, recalled on March 9, 1782, stipulated that a ship at the end of its life could be dismantled and sold: "woods that have suffered from rot or parasite infestation will go into the hearth. But the parts made of tropical wood will emerge unscathed from these injuries, and only the iron fittings will leave traces."». It is of course advisable for the carpenter to conceal «to the best of his ability these traces […] which will be nothing more than discreet witnesses on the furniture that will come out of his workshop». However, on the French Atlantic coast, it was not until the beginning of the 18th century that a significant production of solid furniture made with timber, rather than reclaimed wood, emerged.

Bibliography

• MALFOY, Louis, The port furniture
• MALFOY, Louis, «From the Royal Navy to so-called “port furniture”… or the “short” history of Guyanese wood in the 18th century», Tropical Woods and Forests, CIRAD, vol. 220, 1989, p. 13, available at: https://revues.cirad.fr/index.php/BFT/article/view/19637
• Véronique Jandon-Gabard The wooden furniture of the islands one etiquette Atlantic (1680-1830). Ports of Saint-Malo, Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux. (Thesis presented and defended in Nantes, on November 19, 2021)
• Antiques Philippe Glédel Royal ebony commode from La Rochelle

The Restoration

The restoration work on this chest of drawers mainly consisted of reattaching the various elements of the top using fish glue. A Roubo polish finish was applied to closely match the original finish.