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Center Vanity in Walnut – Central Italy, Early 19th Century
An elegant toilette, but also a small stage for the feminine rituals of another time—reserved for those who could afford the luxury of beauty.
This refined piece, crafted in central Italy in the early 1800s, is made of walnut with veneered sections, shaped with sober taste and discreet mastery.
Its form reveals a taste in transition: we are between the refined restraint of the Carlo X style and the softer, more bourgeois lines of early Louis Philippe. This is evident in the apron beneath the top, with its typical “tulip” flare that gives breath to the silhouette and houses the single central drawer.
Proportioned and well-balanced, this vanity is finished on all four sides—designed not to be confined against a wall, but to stand freely in a room, should one wish.
The shallow oval recess at the center of the top once served a precise purpose: to accommodate a basin for daily grooming rituals, when perfumes, powders, and creams were luxury items reserved for ladies of noble birth or the favored mistresses of the elite. There were no bathrooms as we know them today—there were rooms, slow gestures, precious cosmetics, dense fragrances. And furniture like this.
The wide, tilting mirror, mounted between two turned columns, could be adjusted according to the light and the desired reflection. The legs, still rooted in the Empire tradition, with carved and turned decoration, are connected by a central stretcher and lend both grace and practicality to the structure.
Today, this vanity is ready to become the focal point of a dressing corner with an authentic charm, evoking the atmosphere of a 19th-century master bedroom or bringing quiet authority to a classic or eclectic interior. A piece that doesn’t boast—but tells a story. And invites the imagination.
- Material: Solid walnut wood with veneered sections.
- Size: cm 97 x 41 x 167 h
- Condition: Restored
- Period: Early 19th
- Style: Charles X
- State: Optimal conditions
