■ CURULE STOOL, French, late twentieth century, in the Art Deco manner, the ebonised and varnished wood seat of saddle form raised on a central column of parallel upright slats that open outward to meet a stepped rectangular plinth, the whole drawn directly from the Roman sella curulis - the folding magistrate's stool of Republican antiquity - and recast in the severe geometric vocabulary French cabinet-making developed around the form in the decades following the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs.
The proportions belonging to the line of twentieth-century French reinterpretations of the type advanced by Pierre Chareau and maintained in the decorative tradition of Maison Jansen, though the present stool is unsigned and without attribution, best understood as a later and accomplished essay in the idiom rather than a piece of the period.
Good condition consistent with age and use, the dark varnished surface retaining a deep and even sheen. Height 52 cm (20 ½ inches); width 61 cm (24 inches); depth 31 cm (12 ¼ inches).
Provenance:
□ Private collection, Paris; their sale, at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, was a dispersal notable for its ensemble of bronzes animaliers and early twentieth-century French decorative arts.