In 1979, when he should have been thinking about his retirement, my father embarked on a new career as a model maker. 28 years on he is now considered a master of miniatures.
He specialised in tiny reproductions of Louis XV furniture. His piece, the Bureau du Roi, took four years to complete and is now considered to be the finest piece of miniature furniture in the world.
It is fully mechanical and features 16,000 individual pieces of intricately laid fruit woods. A turn of the key automatically rolls up. the desktop and unlocks the drawers exactly as in the original piece The movement is entirely hand made and faithful to the original.
The ormolu mounts are in solid gold and attached by hundreds of hand made screws.
Remarkably, this miniature only measures 3-1/4" deep by 6-1/4" wide
