A GERMAN BEAD-DECORATED AND BLUE-PAINTED CENTRE TABLE

Description:

Workshop of Johann Michael van Selow, Braunschweig, third quarter 18th century
70 x 80 x 54 cm
The rounded rectangular dished top with moulded edge and decorated with a parrot seated in a branch, framed by scrolling foliage, above a plain frieze, on cabriole legs. With original stand. The polychromy worn and overpainted. Rest, age damages.
Private Collection Baden-Baden
One of the rarest and greatest technical achievements of the eighteenth Century was German glass beadwork from Braunschweig, with Johann Michael van Selow considered to be its finest craftsmen. Van Selow, a Dutch specialist in beadwork techniques, worked under the Royal patronage of Duke Carl I of Braunschweig. The factory was in existence less than twenty years (1755-1772) and few examples of this colourful beadwork exist. Examples of van Selow's work can be seen in the Städtische Museum in Braunschweig and in The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. Perhaps the grandest example of this beadwork technique exists in a salon of the Chinese Palace at the Oranienbaum complex of palaces (now Lomonosov) near St. Petersburg. Built in the 1760's by Antonio Rinaldi for Catherine the Great, the room contains panels depicting fantastic rococo chinoiserie scenes of embroidered and painted silk, perhaps after the designs of Jean Pillement, which are surrounded by large panels woven of blue, mauve and pink glass beads.
A. Kennett, The Palaces of Leningrad, 1973, p. 244.), a beadwork table from his workshop was sold from the Collection of Arne Schlesch, Sotheby's, New York, 5 April 2000, lot 336; while another closely related table attributed to van Selow was sold from the Royal House of Hanover, Sothby's house sale, Schloss Marienburg, 8 October 2005, lot 1465.