Perret & Vibert showcase in oriental style. Paris, ca. 1890

PERRET & VIBERT showcase orientalist style. Paris, ca. 1890.
Ebonized wood, glass, gilt bronze and inlaid bone and mother-of-pearl details.
Part of the bone inlay has been lost.
With manufacturing plate on the back.
Measurements: 192 x 90 x 37 cm.

Chinese-Japanese furniture manufactured by the Parisian firm Perret & Viardet, a company specialized in the creation of bamboo furniture and other decorative objects of oriental inspiration, founded in 1872 by Alfred Perret and Ernest Vibert. The company was known for its "Maison des Bambous" (House of Bamboo) and became a landmark for orientalist decoration in France. The furniture, in the purest style of cabinetmaker Gabriel Viardot (who specialized in the production of "Chinese-Japanese genre" furniture), rises on four curved legs supporting a waist embellished with bone and inlaid mother-of-pearl depicting birds perched on delicate branches. The lower part is decorated with openwork borders in the typically oriental manner. The upper part of the piece is topped with a cornice with upturned eaves (a type of decoration that appeared during the Han dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) and was the standard type used until the Song dynasty (960 - 1279) and with the figure of a bronze dragon in rounded bulk at its center, a very characteristic motif of Viardot.