The structured design of this console table endows it with lightness despite its considerable size (just under 150 cm in width). The D-shaped top consists of a rectangular section against the wall on four tapering cylindrical legs and a curved frontal section resting on two more ornate legs of rectangular cross-section curving at the top. The X-stretcher is a geometric composition of segments and curves with a large vase of flowers in the centre. The frieze and legs are finely carved with the typical motifs of decorative Neoclassicism, including acanthus leaves, beading, rosettes and rows of overlapping circles. Jacob seldom made this kind of furniture. There are few console tables that can be attributed to his workshop with any certainty, whereas the chairs, armchairs and sofas produced in huge quantities have become emblematic of Parisian Neoclassical furniture. 

Georges Jacob (1739-1814, master 1765) is the most famous French menuisier of the 18th century, when the rigid guild system of furniture production entailed a sharp distinction between the menuisier and the menuisier en ébène or ébéniste. The former manufactured solid furniture, primarily chairs, sofas, beds and wall tables, that was not adorned with rare kinds of wood and precious materials but whose decoration ranged from simple mouldings to the richest gilded carving. The latter specialised in the working of ebony and other precious kinds of wood, mostly exotic, used as veneering for structures of ordinary wood and developed in compositions of sumptuous and boundless imagination. In Paris, the statutes introduced by the corporation des menuisiers in 1743 became official in 1751. There is a close parallel, also as regards terminology, between Paris and Turin, where the regulations on the craft of furniture-making attained their most complete codification still earlier than in France with the Regie Patenti of 1738.¹ There is a crucial difference, however, in that the Parisian ébénistes nearly always complied with the obligation to stamp their work while the Turinese and indeed Italian ebanisti hardly ever bothered. 

Georges Jacob was born to humble origins in a small town in Burgundy and hence of French origin, unlike the thirty percent or more of immigrant German, Flemish and Dutch craftsmen who made French furniture great in the 18th century. He arrived in Paris at the age of sixteen and qualified as a maître in 1765, when he was twentysix, which enabled him to open his own workshop. He started in Rue de Cléry and then moved into premises on Rue Meslée that are part of the history of furniture and the scene of an extraordinary artistic career. Jacob’s inventiveness and skill, which extended beyond the Louis XV period and were largely instrumental in forming the Louis XVI style in furniture, brought commissions from the king, the queen and the royal family, as well as princes and the cream of the nobility in France and other countries. A friend of the painter Jacques-Louis David, whose home he furnished, he produced countless chairs and sofas, most of which are noble or extraordinary works epitomising the Neoclassical style. The imitations and fakes began when he was still alive and increased in number after his death. 

Jacob came through the Revolution unscathed, even making furniture for the revolutionary Committee for Public Safety, but he handed over the business to his two sons in 1796, while continuing to work there. The new firm of Jacob Frères was short-lived, becoming Jacob-Desmalter et Cie in 1803 and going bankrupt in 1813. Now old, ill and destitute, the master died the following year.² 

Roberto Antonetto 

¹ For the Parisian statutes, including the status of marchands- merciers, see Pradère 1989, pp. 9-42. For the Turinese regulations, see Antonetto 1985, pp. 30-86. 

² See Verlet 1982, p. 157; Kjellberg 1989, pp. 505- 520; Pradère 1989, pp. 333-342.