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A masterpiece by
HERTER BROTHERS

September 6th –– October 10th, 2016

To mark the opening in 2016 of his combined art gallery and consultancy specialising in 20th-century decorative arts at 27 rue Saint-Dominique, Emmanuel Eyraud has taken up the challenge of organising an exhibition in September devoted to a single work, a Masterpiece by Herter Brothers, a prestigious New York cabinetmaker and decorator from the second half of the 19th century.

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This presentation, a real event in terms of both its form and its nature, will enable a broad public, as well as collectors, to admire, and even acquire, an exceptional presidential-type desk, treated in blackened wood, adorned with gold and purple engraved fillets and finished with flamboyant panels of precious wood marquetry with luxuriant motifs. Despite its highly accomplished aesthetics, this piece of furniture, which probably arrived in France at the end of the 19th century from an architect, is extremely functional, with pulls, leaves, drawers and flaps, as well as as astonishing cardholder bellows preserved in their original purple-tinted leather.

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This impressive piece of furniture, as much for its aesthetic and technical qualities as for its dimensions, is a perfect example of the American Aesthetic Movement, a movement created around 1870 by Herter Brothers and drawing its inspiration from European and Far Eastern art. This fully-fledged American style elegantly and boldly combined the modernity of English Arts and Crafts, the exuberance of French marquetry and the sobriety of Japanese furniture. The success of this type of furniture was immediate and immense for the firm, which during its 41 years of existence, from 1865 to 1906, counted among its customers some of the greatest American fortunes of the time (Vanderbilt, Gould, Goodwin) and was entrusted with the decoration of major hotels, restaurants and even part of the White House.

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A veritable flagship piece of furniture from one of the jewels in the crown of American cabinetmaking, this desk, stamped Herter Brothers, rare and sumptuous, imposing and subtle, is undoubtedly one of the firm's major works, some of which are still preserved today in the greatest museums across the Atlantic: the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and museums in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta, Saint-Louis, Boston, Pittsburg, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Toledo, Newark, etc. In Paris, the Musée d'Orsay, next door to the Espace Emmanuel Eyraud, has a Japanese cabinet, a distant cousin of the piece on display in rue Saint-Dominique.

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