Commode of Mademoiselle de Sens
Bernard II van Risenburgh (BVRB), with Sèvres porcelain plaques (after 1696-1765) · c. 1760
Ninety plaques of Sèvres porcelain cover the front and sides of this commode, held in a lattice of chased and gilded bronze like jewels in a setting. Most of the plaques carry the factory's date letter F for seventeen fifty-eight. The two doors open in a zigzag, and where the porcelain stops, the surface is veneered in yew and tulipwood; a slab of red griotte marble forms the top. Look for the stamp BVRB struck into the carcass: the mark of Bernard the Second van Risenburgh, the most refined Parisian cabinetmaker of Louis the Fifteenth's reign and the first to mount porcelain on furniture.
The idea almost certainly came from the dealer Simon-Philippe Poirier, whose shop At the Golden Crown on the rue Saint-Honoré was the most fashionable luxury store in Paris and who received the plaques from Sèvres early in seventeen sixty. The first owner was Élisabeth-Alexandrine de Bourbon-Condé, known as Mademoiselle de Sens, a princess of the blood; it then belonged to the Prince de Condé at the Palais-Bourbon and later to Édouard de Rothschild. Declared a national treasure in twenty twenty-three, it was bought by the Louvre in twenty twenty-six, one of the museum's newest acquisitions.
Did You Know? Ninety pieces of Sèvres porcelain cover the commode, and most still carry the factory's date letter for 1758.
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