Maurice Jallot French Art Deco Parchment Inlaid Cabinet

A Fine French 1940s Parchment-Covered Cabinet, Firmly Attributed to Maurice Jallot

French circa 1940

The cabinet of broadly rectangular form with a shaped lower apron adding significant visual interest. The cabinet covered in parchment which has been embossed creating a gilt diamond trellis pattern across the front. In the centre is a bronze faun's head mount of extremely large and eye-catching scale which acts both as a focal point for the design and the handle for the doors. The cabinet stands on four long, turned and tapering sycamore legs with gilt collars and toupie feet mounts in gilt bronze.

This rather extraordinary cabinet can be firmly attributed to the designer Maurice Jallot. A coffee table by Jallot featuring these same, highly distinctive, legs was sold by Phillips in New York on the 24th of May 2005. Additionally, a cabinet of similar form to the present piece but with simplified decoration was sold at Palm Beach Modern Auctions on the 21st of November 2015. This cabinet was also covered in parchment but has simpler handles rather than the faun's head mount. It does, however, employ precisely the same legs as on the present piece and provides further evidence for our attribution on that basis alone.

The faun's head mount on our cabinet is virtually identical to those seen on a small series of cabinets retailed by Maison Jansen. These cabinets also employ parchment coverings, some with the trellis-type decoration seen on our piece, but they all stand on rather unhappy-looking gilt cabriole legs. It seems likely that one of the firms took inspiration from the other's design. Jansen's pieces were all made in the 1940s and this is also when Jallot was at his height. It is more likely that the original design was Jallot's but, at this stage, that must remain somewhat speculative.

The use of a faun's mask as the central feature of the piece is a reference to the Bacchic rites of ancient Rome, fauns being worshippers of Bacchus and involved in his revelries. Bacchus was, amongst other things, god of wine and so his image has been extensively utilised on furniture and interior decoration intended to enhance rooms where drinking was to take place-principally drawing rooms and dining rooms.

Maurice Jallot

Jallot was born in 1900 and his father had already established the family business, being a highly talented carver, cabinetmaker and decorator. After training at the Ecole Boulle in Paris, Jallot worked for the architect and designer Louis Süe, gaining experience in an outside firm, before returning to the family business with the benefit of this experience in 1921. Father and son had very different tastes, Maurice being the modernist and his father Leon having more traditional tastes. As such, when the firm exhibited at the major exhibitions of the period, they sometimes showed their pieces separately, such as at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1928.

Maurice Jallot's designs often incorporated rare woods and were decorated with ormolu mounts, ivory, painted glass and other exotic materials. The cabinetry employed was always of the very highest quality. Jallot exhibited widely on the international stage with shows in London and New York amongst others. He won many awards over the course of his career.

Amongst Jallot's many commissions, he worked extensively for the French government including at the Elysée palace, home of the French president, and in the French embassies in Israel and Poland. As a decorator he also designed luxury shop interiors and rooms for yachts and mansions in France and abroad. Jallot retired in the 1950s after an extraordinarily successful career and died in 1971.

Width: 24 inches - 61cm
Height: 44 1/2 inches -113cm
Depth: 17 1/2 inches - 44cm