François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter

Jewelery Cabinet, 1809-12 ( Musée du Louvre )

François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter (born January 6, 1770 in Paris , † August 15, 1841 in Paris) ran one of the most influential and successful furniture workshops in Paris, Jacob-Desmalter et Cie . From 1796 to 1825 .

life and work

Jacob-Desmalter was the son of Georges Jacob , a cabinet maker who made furniture in the Louis Seize style (French early classicism) and worked for the French royal family. He took over his father's workshop together with his brother in 1796. Freed from the Paris guild restrictions, the workshop was now not only allowed to produce turned and carved seating furniture, but also veneered furniture . After his brother's death, Georges Jacob gave up his retirement. The two built one of the largest furniture workshops in Napoleonic Paris. You and your father are considered to be the creators of the Empire style

Furniture in the Empire style of the workshop were mainly a mahogany - veneer and were decorated with bronze mounts. The seating furniture was often inspired by ancient Greek vases and corresponds to the Klismos chairs of antiquity. The workshop's clients included Pauline Bonaparte , Napoleon's sister and the empresses Joséphine de Beauharnais and Marie-Louise of Austria . The castles that have been equipped with furniture workshop, among other Malmaison Castle , Castle Compiegne and the Tuileries Palace . One of the most important orders is a magnificent cradle for Napoleon's son, Napoleon Franz Bonaparte . The most expensive order was a jewelry cabinet for the French Empress, which was completed in 1812.

Due to the great economic dependence on the House of Napoleon , the company went bankrupt in 1813, as Napoleon could no longer pay his debts. Jacob-Desmalter succeeded in rebuilding the company and began to accept orders again from 1815. The workshop was run by Jacob-Desmalter until he handed it over to his son Alphonse-George in 1825.

Stool for Napoleon

Stool (French: tabouret) from the workshop of the Jacob brothers in Paris : wood, carved, decorated and gilded, resting on console feet in the form of lion paws, 19th century, Empire epoch , Paris around 1810. On the underside of the inventory stamp of the Palais des Tuileries .

The stool (French: tabouret) for Napoleon is one of the most famous stool models from the workshop of the Jacob brothers on Rue Meslée in Paris (François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter and his brother Georges Jacob Fils).

Stools based on this model were made by the Jacob brothers on behalf of Emperor Napoleon for the Compiègne Castle , the Fontainebleau Castle and the Tuileries Palace . In the inventory of Compiègne Castle drawn up in 1811, 8 such stools are mentioned under the inventory number 1334: Huit tabourets bois dorés pieds à cuisses à enroulement et rosaces dans le haut et griffes dans le bas, les dits garnis à épaisseur et couverts en brocards id aux canapés, encadrées d'un galon or fin, et avec cloux dorés sur galon d'or faux. Hauteur 50 c , longueur 60 c, profondeur 52 c.

The stools for Compiègne Castle were intended for the salon des premier appartement de prince . The apartment was ready for occupancy on June 1, 1808. The stools are still listed in the inventory of 1817. They are no longer mentioned in the inventory of 1825. The model for this stool already existed in 1803 and was taken up again by the Jacob brothers as part of the furnishing of Compiègne Castle.

The shape and the decoration of this stool, especially the legs, go back to the design of a table base by Percier et Fontaine ( Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine ) (Percier et Fontaine, Recueil de décorations intérieures, pl.XVI). Based on this design, the Jacob brothers also made Napoleon's work tables in Malmaison Castle, Compiègne Castle and Fontainebleau Castle , among others .

A stool of this model with the stamp of the Jacob brothers from the Saint-Cloud castle is today in the collection des Mobilier national in Paris, illustrated in E. Dumonthier: Les Sièges de Jacob Frères, Paris, 1921, p. 33.

A stool of the same model with the branding of Compiègne Castle (CP under a crown in an oval) was sold on June 23, 2005 at Christie's auction house in Paris for EUR 18,000 (auction 5310 / lot 401).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hermann Boekhoff, Fritz Winzer: World History of Occidental Culture , Westermann, 1963. P. 478
2. ↑ (now in the Louvre) .

Web links

Commons : François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Getty Museum: Jacob-Desmalter et Cie

literature

• Denise Ledoux-Lebard: Le mobilier français du XIXe siècle: 1795 - 1889 . dictionnaire des ébénistes et des menuisiers (updated and supplemented new edition). Édition de l'Amateur, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-85917-088-X (Formerly under the title: Les ébénistes du XIXe siècle , 1965: a standard work in furniture science, lexicon of manufacturers with their signatures, in the panel part 308 images of old furniture) .