Pedestal with Chimeras

By Jean-Joseph Chapuis (1765-1864)

Brussels, about 1810-1820

Materials: mahogany, patinated and gilded wood, turquoise blue capella marble

Dimensions: H. 76.5 cm; D. 74 cm

Stamp: unsigned

Resting on a mahogany veneer plinth and ornamented with barrel-shaped bronze wheels, this pedestal stands by a central Doric column flanked by three carved wooden Eels, patinated in the color of bronze and embossed with gilding on the crests, teeth and eyes. All support a circular tray recessed a blue Turquin Capella marble table (restored), surrounded by a Mahogany headband. This type of Pedestal is inspired by the Baltic and Swedish furniture in force during the time of the French Empire.

Jean-Joseph Chapuis (1765-1864)

Jean-Joseph Chapuis was born in Brussels in 1765 and died there in 1864. He was trained in Paris where he obtained the master’s degree, which allowed him to use a stamp. He had installed his studio in his hometown around 1795 and kept it in business until 1830, regularly applying, one or more times, on the furniture of his manufacture, his stamp. When the first books on the history of French furniture appeared in Paris in the eighteenth century, it was attributed to a namesake Claude, who was in fact a mere merchant, of which we know nothing but who deprived him of his renowned.

This unknown existence explains why few of Jean-Joseph Chapuis’s furniture exists in public collections both abroad and in Belgium, and is not it – the museum of the Vleeshuis in Antwerp aside – that isolated pieces that prevent an exact account of the multiple aspects of its production. Only the Charlier Museum of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode (Brussels) can make contact with several furniture stamped Chapuis all gathered by the same enthusiast of empire, Joseph Adolphe Van Cutsem who, in 1865, also completed his collection by two major purchases at the Jean Joseph Chapuis mortuary sale. But this set does not reflect every facet of the cabinetmaker’s production.