Venice Baroque Nightstand Bella Epoque, Walnut And Briar, By Testolini Freres

ATTENTION: The price indicated is for a single bedside table: indicate in the order whether Right or Left (right with handle on the right, left with handle on the left seen from the front)Venice Baroque bedside table by Testolini Freres, Bella Epoque period, walnut and briar with burnished bronze handles. Wax polishedTESTOLINI BROTHERS-TESTOLINI FRERESFratelli Testolini saw its birth as a carpentry-cabinetmaking company; its owners were not ordinary personalities and immediately began to introduce new fashions in furnishings. The period chosen was not among the most propitious - shortly thereafter there would be the uprisings of 1848 and the famous revolt of Manin and the Republic of San Marco -, but the Testolini were not discouraged and serenely continued their production, seizing immediately the fresh artistic eclecticism that invaded the world from the mid-19th century, starting to conceive and produce original and imaginative models.Venice increasingly became a destination for rich international tourism and the Testolini Brothers began to diversify and expand their production, covering all branches of applied arts. Towards the end of the century their production was very varied: furniture, furnishing accessories, porcelain, textiles, lace, wrought iron, sculptures in both marble and wood, mosaics, micromosaics, glass, embossed metal objects and photographic material.This production volume led them to enormously expand the number of their locations. They occupied the entire size of Palazzo Labia in San Geremia in the Cannaregio district, where their first carpentry shop had arisen; they also acquired the central portion of the old procuratie in Piazza S. Marco in the S. Marco district, two furnaces in Murano, respectively in Fondamenta dei Vetrai and in Fondamenta Cavour, Palazzo Barbarigo in the Dorsoduro district, the headquarters of S. Gregorio in the same neighborhood and finally, not to forget, the late production and sales headquarters in Florence, just to mention the most important ones.The aristocracy and the international upper class crowded their shops; among the buyers there were even the Italian sovereigns, the hereditary princes, the dukes of Aosta and the sovereigns of Portugal, who were so pleased with the purchases made that they allowed the Testolinis to affix their coats of arms on the company's advertising material.