Late Baroque secreter

Construction - spruce, pine, oak, veneer - mahogany, black oak, birch, oak; 240 x 124 x 64 cm;
Northern Germany and Silesia; 2nd half of the 18th century.
Paper sticker on the back of the settee: Gehort Else Moller / Erb. nach Fr. Zaza Vanek.
Composed of three parts with straight sides, a two-winged settee with a straight front, topped with an upswept and torn volute pediment with a crotch and a helm in the middle, a secreter part with a diagonally arranged lid placed on a commode-like three-drawer base with a wavy and fluted front, supported on four cube legs. The door wings and the trapdoor frame with flush panels and decorated on the edge with an inlaid, multi-colored ribbon with geometric florals in the corners and stars in the middle. The front corners of the settee are decorated with cascading. The pediment is profiled, with decorative overlays in the center, with a turned helm. Drawer fronts in horizontal section resemble the outline of an arch in the center, with beveled waves on the sides. The slats between and above the drawers are decorated with castellation. Rococo brass handles on the sides of the commode base. Brass fittings: the rococo settings in the form of cartouches, wavy cut, decorated with rocaille, in the base (the dresser and the secreter) in wavy cut sheet metal, at the top in the form of three-leaf blossoms, tapering to the bottom, with arched handles, tied in the middle. In the interior of the settee two shelves. The interior of the secreter part filled with drawers, three on the sides and in the middle three tiny ones at the bottom above the closed two.
A piece of furniture consisting of two sets made in the 2nd half of the 18th century in North Germany, i.e. a settee with a finial and a base with a secreter part and a chest of drawers, joined and completed probably in the 1st quarter of the 20th century in Silesia. This was a customary practice for furniture that, for sentimental or antique reasons, one wanted to preserve and restore its functionality.