private collection
This buffet has marquetry medallions with the family dogs. The cabinet itself is done in mahogany and mahogany crotch. The borders around the panels are boulle-work. Boulle-work is the technique of taking a metal and a darker material (usually wood), placing them together and cutting the motif. This yields two parts, one with the metal in the wood and also the wood in the metal. here the front of the cabinet has the metal in the wood (called the première-partie) and the sides have the wood in the metal (in this case brass). This is called the contra-partie.