SUPERB "ANTIQUE MALE BUST" WEDDING CABINET BY THOMAS HACHE Very richly inlaid on both leaves and the cornice, with a frieze of alternating light and dark wood dice, foliage and flowers, a bust of a man in the antique style, female figures, pediments, pedestals, bouquets of naturalistic flowers (carnations, tulips, sunflowers, narcissus, etc....), ornaments in engraved blue scagliola (flowers, draperies, ribbons, foliage), Renommées, garlands, masks of men in foliage and oil lamps, in a tripartite composition of reserves surrounded by cartouches, on a stained walnut base and cloudy burr walnut backgrounds on the front. The walnut and blond sycamore filleted sides form three rectangular reserves and the sides of the cornice repeat the leafy smiling masks of men at the ends of the cornice frieze on the front. Removable interior fir dovetail-mounted pedestal, opening to two rows of three drawers each, with a wire walnut front. The interior of the doors is in walnut with two rectangular recesses. Fir wood frame, six blackened wood ball feet. Thomas HACHE (Toulouse 1664 - Grenoble 1747), Chambéry circa 1690-1695 H. 204.2 ; W. 152 ; D. 62 cm Minor restorations to the interior and back. Lifts, cracks and splits. Hinges, brass plugs and lock escutcheons, iron escutcheon, old keys and toothed racks. The original back is reinforced with strips all around the fir boards. AN ORIGINAL "ANTIQUE" MOTIF BY THOMAS HACHE With this bust of a man in the style of Antiquity, which adorns the centre of the frieze of this so-called wedding cabinet, or ceremonial cabinet given the high quality of its naturalistic marquetry - some of which may have been originally brightly coloured - Thomas Hache once again demonstrates his wide range of sources, drawing here on Italian Renaissance sculpture inspired by Antiquity. Among the cabinets recorded to date, we often come across a motif inspired by the Middle Ages, on the theme of the Wild Man, in a scene where courtly love prevails over lust, illustrated by a young man grabbing the hair of a shaggy man who drops his club, visible on four cabinets (ibidem, pp. 82-83, 91, 92-93, 95). This motif of a man's bust in the antique style has been found again, quite recently, first on a cabinet simulating a double body, then on a large mirror by Thomas Hache, which will be reproduced in Volume 2, as will cabinets with ornaments taken from ancient Egypt. There is also a large amount of scagliola, which is an intense turquoise blue and has retained all the finesse of its engraving. This process, invented in 17th-century Italy to imitate the marble and hard stone marquetry of the Florentine Renaissance workshops at lower cost, uses selenite, a variety of gypsum, which is heated, crushed and mixed with colour pigments, water and skin glue, then applied warm to the cavities in the decoration, before being engraved with a drypoint to bring out the details, and finally polished to give it the shine of marble. Thomas Hache, who first settled in Chambéry, the administrative capital of the Duchy of Savoy, very close to Italy, had the idea of using this complex process in his marquetry, whereas cabinetmakers in Paris used horn stained in various colours (ibidem, pp. 72-77). Expert: Françoise ROUGE, expert at the Paris Court of Appeal, 06 03 93 23 76