Two Bas-relief Plaques Mounted in a Roll-top Desk

Two bas-relief plaques mounted in the roll-top desk F460 in the nineteenth century. The pale-blue paste has white figures in relief; on A Hymen stands between a reluctant couple, B shows the three Graces. The roll-top desk is a copy of the one made for Louis XV (now at Versailles) by Jean-François Oeben (1721-1763) and Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) and delivered in 1769. This copy was made for the 4th Marquess of Hertford in Paris, perhaps by a cabinet-maker called Drexler or Dreschler. In the 1850s the 4th Marquess of Hertford was on friendly terms with Napoleon III and the Empress Eugènie. He is likely to have seen the original desk, then in the royal apartments at the palace of Saint-Cloud. His copy repeats the desk as altered in 1794 when the original interlaced Ls of Louis XV were replaced with biscuit porcelain Sèvres plaques.