CRESSENT, Charles

French cabinetGLOSSARYA small, private room where works of art, valuables and curiosities were kept and contemplated at leisure; over time the term was used for the collections themselves. Renaissance cabinets played an important role in the development of museums and art galleries.-maker and sculptor. Cressent was the leading proponent of the Régence styleGLOSSARYTransitional style in architecture and decoration originated in France during the regency (1715–23) of Philippe, duc d'Orléans. The most important practitioners of the régence were Gilles Marie Oppenord and Robert de Cotte. In this period, curved lines and many motifs such as shells, masques, and sinuous foliated scrolls were introduced. These innovations were subsequently developed in Rococo design. The legs of furniture took bulging outlines and the corners of panels were curved. The use of gilt bronze was extended, and walnut, rosewood, and other woods largely replaced ebony in veneers. and introduced marquetries of coloured wood and ormolu to case decoration.

He was taught by his father, François Cressent, a sculptor in Amiens, and became a maître-ébéniste on 9 January 1708. In 1710 he went to Paris, where he worked in the studio of the cabinet-maker André-Charles Boulle. He subsequently became a pupil of François Girardon and became a maître sculpteur in the Académie de Saint-Luc, Paris, on 14 August 1714. In 1715 Cressent was appointed official cabinet-maker to Philippe II, duke d'Orlans. He obtained the title of Ebéniste du Régent in 1719, which allowed him to trade as a cabinet-maker free from guildGLOSSARYAn association of the masters of a particular craft, trade or profession (painters, goldsmiths, surgeons, and so on) set up to protect its members' rights and interests. Such guilds existed in virtually every European city in the 16th century. The guild also monitored standards of work, acted as a court for those who brought their trade into disrepute, and provided assistance to members in need. restrictions. The richest French patrons, the Portuguese Court and many German princes bought furniture from him.

His work is of exceptional quality and epitomizes the Régence and early Louis XV styles, to which he remained faithful throughout his career. The forms of his pieces were perfectly curved and rendered sumptuous by abundant, virtuoso bronzeGLOSSARYAn alloy of copper (usually about 90 per cent) and tin, often also containing small amounts of other metals such as lead or zinc. Since antiquity it has been the metal most commonly used in cast sculpture because of its strength, durability, and the fact that it is easily workable - both hot and cold - by a variety of processes. It is easier to cast than copper because it has a lower melting-point, and its great tensile strength makes possible the protrusion of unsupported parts - an advantage over marble sculpture. The colour of bronze is affected by the proportion of tin or other metals present, varying from silverish to a rich, coppery red, and its surface beauty can be enhanced when it acquires a patina. mounts and emphatically serrated agraffe ornaments and mouldings. His lavish mounts to some extent obscured the restrained veneering or geometric marquetry, for which he almost always used rose-wood, purple-wood or satin-wood.

Above all, however, he was a sculptor, and he contravened guild restrictions by modelling the bronzes that adorn his furniture himself; these included terminals depicting the Four Continents (e.g. book-cabinet; Lisbon, Museu Gulbenkian), Child Musicians (e.g. commode) and Seated Women Holding Cornucopias (e.g. commode; both Munich, Residenzmuseum), all c. 1740. These figures were combined with vegetation consisting of palms, vines and garlands of flowers, which emphasized the furniture's contours. He also mounted furniture with busts of Mars (e.g. desk, c. 1740; Paris, Louvre) and espagnolette heads (female head surrounded by a stiff ruff; e.g. commode, c. 1730; London, Wallace Collection). He also made many, predominantly bronze, cartel-clocks, the most remarkable of which depicts the theme of Love Conquering Time (c. 1747; London, Wallace Collection).