Follower of Giuseppe Maggiolini (Parabiago, Milan, 1738–1814)
Console table
Wood inlaid with rosewood, maple and boxwood, fittings of gilded bronze, top of black Carnian marble,early 19th century
The King’s Bath Chamber

This console table is a model from the repertoire of the great Lombard cabinetmaker Giuseppe Maggiolini, who used the flat surfaces of the Louis XVI furniture produced during his long and successful career to bring the technique of inlaid work back into fashion, creating peerless masterpieces with the aid of skilled designers. With veneers of different woods and the deft use of shading obtained through heat, he created captivating pictorial and perspective effects on the surfaces of the furniture to conceal its functional parts. The inlaid decoration of the console table in the royal bath chamber presents the motif of plant volutes with putti drawn from the classical repertoire and taken up again in the closing decades of the 18th century.