LARGE TRANSITION PERIOD CHEST OF DRAWERS BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS HACHE (GRENOBLE 1730-1776) Opening with two rows of drawers separated by a crosspiece, curved on the front and sides, with projecting front jambs, on a cherrywood frame. on a cherrywood frame, with a veneer of rosewood, moiré beech and cloudy and moiré sycamore burl, stained blond and green, in a reserve décor consisting of a large oval of bottomless cubes in wire walnut on the front, flanked by two four-leaf moiré beech medallions, all linked by a large blackened wood fillet in an original design. The faces of the projecting jambs, like the apron, are decorated with cartouches in fine brown burr sycamore, while the front and sides are punctuated with small green burr sycamore pastilles. The drawer mouldings are olive wood. Resting on four "pastille" feet. Mounted with a key. Beautiful cloudy grey Mulberry marble. Varnished bronze drawer handles and foliate escutcheons. Jean-François HACHE (Grenoble 1730-1776), cabinetmaker to the Duc d'Orléans, circa 1770. 85 x 136.5 x 67 cm (Some wear, cracks, missing parts and repairs to the veneer. veneer) This piece of furniture will be reproduced in Volume 2 of the book "Le génie des Hache", Pierre and Françoise Rouge, Faton Rouge, Faton 2005, forthcoming. EXOTIC WOOD AND TINTED BURLS IN AN ORIGINAL BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS HACHE It was Jean-François Oeben, the cabinetmaker to the King and the Pompadour, and a friend of Pierre and Jean-François Hache (in Le génie des Hache, Pierre et Françoise Rouge, Faton 2005, p. 58-61), who made cubes fashionable around 1760. Until the discovery of this model, only three chests of drawers with cube decoration by Jean-François Hache were known (ibidem, pp. 297, 311 and 315), made between 1768 and 1778 and all of them small, unlike our chest of drawers, which is large and has a beautiful Mûre marble curved into a crossbow on the front. In addition to the novelty of the decoration, which is unprecedented in the design of the large fillet that encloses the reserves on the front and sides, and whose layout is virtuoso - being uninterrupted to form circles, ovals, straight lines and angles - this model is also distinguished by the extensive use of exotic woods such as rosewood on the front and sides. Here we find the illusionist process dear to Jean-François Hache, which consists of ignoring the central crosspiece to let the viewer's eye reconstruct the oval and the medallions, acting as a signature as much as a stamp or a label.