Early 19th Century French Commode?

Hello. I'm looking for any info I can find on this commode I picked up over the weekend. I'm thinking it's early 19th century due to the drawer construction, style, and hand-planed drawer bottoms. Please let me know your thoughts.

 

I like it, but it doesn't seem Empire or Neoclassical, though it has elements of both. I think those cabriole legs give it a lightness that is actually from an earlier period.

Lots of people here know more about furniture than I.

 

Welcome!
Better if you Full Image all the photos please.

 

Done. Thanks

 

No expert on European furniture here but think this has some age to it. I am not sure it is really French though. Just looks a bit mundane. Where did you get this?

 

That top is jarring. I don't think it originally looked like that. It's painted wood, isn't it?

 

I found it at a local shop. This place is basically piles of furniture floor to ceiling. You can barely walk around. I had to dig this out of the pile.

 

The top is marble.

 

In Podunk, US or Timbuktu, Africa? Does this dealer have a lot of imports? Etc. Context is everything in determining this. If you said you got it in France, I might be more inclined to think it French.

 

There is quite a bit of European furniture in the area (Massachusetts). From the research I've done the brass bow escutcheons were common in early 19th century French furniture. I've also found a few other commodes that are very similar in style that are definitely late 18th/early 19th century French. I've posted one below that is a bit more ornate, but the style is strikingly similar.

 

Hi JD!

I live in Wakefield...not far from Rowley....I can't place the shop to which you refer.....

 

Is Todd Farm still there? I used to live in Newburyport - left in the early 80's, though.

 

Knows nada about european furniture but with furniture in general, it's kinda important where the person is, where the piece was found yet very few folks identify on their profile where in the world they are. I don't get it, what's the big secret?

 

I just signed up and did not see a spot for location during the registration, hence no location in my profile.

 

weird

 

Yes, it had closed for a short time (maybe a couple of years....heard it was a family squabble), but it reopened again a few years back.

The barn has added a good size room, which is heated and that portion is opened all year long.

 

What's the date on this piece? I think you are correct in that it's what the designer was going for, but I don't think the design of yours is so successful. On yours the melding of the top portion with those legs is not so harmonious.

Maybe yours is a provincial piece? A post-period piece from someplace that had not quite caught up with the industrial revolution? But then it has that marble top. I would imagine a piece of marble cut to a specific shape to be fairly expensive, especially if done by hand. I'm just throwing out guesses here.

 

I'm glad someone else thinks the top is odd and then there's the fact that it fits. I wonder if the top of this one matched and got broken and they found one from another piece of furniture that was similar? We'll never know.

On another subject, I thought a commode was a piece of furniture that held toilet items - chamber pot, towels, etc. This is a cabinet. You wouldn't put a chamber pot in a drawer. Am I totally off base?

 

I thought the same thing. There should be a large - as in "commodious" chamber for said pot.