Louis-Philippe Cabinet in Oak, 1840s

Magnificent piece of furniture known as collectors in solid oak. It has a display case in the upper part and opens on the front with 4 drawers.
This centerpiece piece of furniture is based on a plinth and has a secret closing mechanism.

Period: Louis-Philippe – Beginning of the 19th
Circa: 1835 – 1840
Dimensions: Height: 78cm x Width: 65cm x Depth: 46cm

In the 19th century, the collection became a social fact, certainly because it in turn embodied the educational role of the Republican discourse, then the desire to fill the private sphere with art, in the face of the fear of the new world which was born at the end of the century.

In the 1840s: the collector is seen as an asocial eccentric. He is passionate but more associated with the madman than with the scholar.
Often solitary, the latter’s collection is a refuge for him. However, the practice of collecting spreads and gradually contaminates the bourgeois …

In the 1860s, the opening of the Drouot auction house brought together the most learned Parisians. The development of private collections is done at the same time as the opening of some museums (the Cluny 1844 museum – the Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1854 national antiquities museum).

Collectors have therefore acquired real legitimacy and are no longer on the margins but at the head of civil society. The practice gradually affected all the amateurs whose number increased from year to year and then became a fact of fashion, but this only attested from the 1870s.

In the 1870s everyone collected. The practice of collecting has become a norm. These are then very diversified since everyone collects, it is necessary to stand out by the works and objects collected. The collection thus encourages the sociological analysis of its constitution, what is collected reflects the tastes and social environment of the collector.