18th Century French Commode

Jean-Pierre Latz

Jean-Pierre Latz was one of the handful of truly outstanding cabinetmakers working in Paris in the mid 18th-century. Like several of his peers in the French capital, he was of German origin. His furniture is in a fully developed rococo style, employing boldly sculptural gilt-bronze mounts complementing marquetry motifs of flowers and leafy sprays, in figured tropical veneers like tulipwood, , purpleheart and rosewood, often featuring the distinctive end-grain cuts. He also produced lacquered pieces, most famously the slant-front desk in the collection of Stavros Niarchos, Paris.

The son of a certain Walter Latz, Jean-Pierre was born near Cologne, where he must have received his training, for when he settled in Paris in 1719, where he was received into the cabinetmakers’ guild, he was aged twenty-six. He always retained a certain German weightiness to his designs. When the practice of stamping the carcasses of furniture was introduced in Paris, Latz was already in full career. Nevertheless, his style is individual enough that a range of unstamped case furniture, writing tables and especially clock cases, his specialty, with close stylistic connections to stamped pieces, can be attributed to his workshop.