Attributed to Joan Busquets

Attributed to JOAN BUSQUETS I JANÉ (Barcelona, 1874 - 1949).
Pair of bedside tables, ca. 1900.
In walnut wood, Ceylon lemongrass and other fruit woods.
Marble top.
Marble on the top and on the back of the lower door.
Measurements: 129 x 47 x 42 cm.

The quality and style of this pair of modernist coffee tables coincide with the most select furniture designed by Joan Busquets, one of the great cabinetmakers and decorators of Catalan modernism, whose designs are a reflection of the welfare and aspirations of the booming bourgeoisie, and are distinguished by the use of noble and expensive woods and by the work of marquetry and carving. We are faced with a piece of furniture structured in two differentiated bodies and at the same time united by the curved and enveloping moldings. The lower one houses a small cupboard and in the upper one, the white marble top rests on a small drawer and culminates in a finely carved floral top. The intermediate body functions as a showcase and is enhanced by sinuous intertwined organic stems that run through it and outline the piece of furniture, from the feet to the top. Coups de fuet, carved flowers on the upper panel, bulbous forms and gilded bronze handles complete the exquisite decoration. The fruitwood soffits are combined with walnut moldings.

Furniture designer and decorator, Joan Busquets is currently considered one of the most representative figures of Catalan modernism. He began his training in the family workshop, and then studied at the Escuela de La Llotja in Barcelona, where his teachers were Guitart and Lostaló. In the 1895-96 academic year he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to travel around Spain, which he obtained thanks to a project for a Renaissance-style bookcase-cabinet. He exhibited furniture projects for the first time at the Barcelona Exhibition of 1896. The workshop of Joan Busquets was one of the most outstanding of modernist Catalonia and is currently, together with the production of Gaspar Homar, the most representative testimony of the furniture and decoration of Catalan modernism. He was president of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas between 1918 and 1921, and supervised the manufacture of furniture for Gaudí's Casa Calvet. Works by Busquets can currently be found in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Güell Palace in Barcelona, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Catalan Modernism in Barcelona, among others, as well as in several important private collections.