Neo-etruscan Or Neo-greek Style Smoking Kit In Gilt Chiseled Bronze

Neo-Etruscan or Neo-Greek Style Smoking Kit in gilded chiseled bronze decorated with palmettes and lotus flowers, stylized acanthus foliage and rosettes, scrolls of vine branches animated with antique profiles and satyr masks. Parisian work from the second half of the 19th century close to the creations of the sculptor-chaser attached to the Maison Barbedienne, Ferdinand Levillain (1837-1905). Composed of four pieces - covered tobacco jar, cup for cigarettes or cigars, matchstick and ashtray - socked on a trilobed-shaped tray, this Smoking Kit borrows its shapes, its discreet ornamental adornment from the world of Greco-Antiquity. Roman. Profile cameos of Bacchus, Ceres - divinities of Drunkenness and Abundance - and of a noble patrician initiated into Dionysian pleasures reinforce His very "ancient" touch. Equipped with wings, exquisite masks of blowing satyrs add a note of fantasy to this luxurious object adorned in the Pompeiian Style. Enhanced by the decoration and furnishings of the stunning Maison Pompéienne (1856-1860) built in Paris, avenue Montaigne by Prince Napoleon, the Neo-Greek or Neo-Etruscan Style took over from the Universal Exhibition of 1867 onwards. decorative Art. In the wake of its main protagonist - Ferdinand Levillain (1837-1905) - bronziers and manufacturers of "Articles de Paris" adopted this new source of inspiration. Within imperial residences, private mansions or large Parisian apartments of the Second Empire, the so-called Fumoir lounge (such as that of the Hotel Jacquemart-André in Paris) offered a high-level male fringe many fun receptacles such as: services coffee, Turkish pipes, cellars and liquor sets, cigar cabinets and ... smoker's kit.