Paris. The Paris judicial court rendered, on February 13, a decision in the case of the false furniture sold in Versailles between 2008 and 2012. The decision concerns in this case a shepherdess with flat file at the Queen (see ill.), From Louis XVI period and carrying the stamp of Jean-Baptiste Sené. This shepherdess was supposed to have been delivered in 1789 for the Sister’s Sister Sister Sister at the Château de Montreuil, sold at the auction in 1793 and entered a private collection on an indefinite date. It had been auctioned by the Thierry de Maigret auction house in June 2011 and pre -empted by the Palace of Versailles at its low estimate, € 200,000.
A shepherdess made very recently
But since the revelations of the expert Bill Pallot who rocked the market in 2016, we know that this shepherdess had been manufactured by a recognized cabinetmaker of the Faubourg-Saint-Antoine with whom he was in contact: Bruno Desnoues. The cabinetmaker had put him on sale via Thierry de Maigret, assisted for the occasion of the expert Guillaume Dillé.
Unsurprisingly, the court granted the requests of the Palace of Versailles who wanted to obtain the seller with the reimbursement of the Hammer Price and at the Buyer costs sales house (€ 47,000). The case was all the easier to decide since Bruno Desnoues had admitted to having made a false and that “The authenticity of the furniture represents a substantial quality of the thing” Even if the seller tried in vain to defend himself by arguing that the Palace of Versailles should have been more vigilant. Consequently, the court pronounced the cancellation of the sale and ordered the reimbursements. He also ordered the seller to compensate the sales center up to € 24,000.
Other justice decisions should follow, in particular the criminal component of the case which concerns Bill Pallot, the cabinetmaker who made this false shepherdess and other furniture, the antique deaire Laurent Kraemer by whom certain parts, the gilding of furniture and the transporter who put the OCBC on the case. The case has indeed started on a completely different track, the suddenly returned from a driver who served as an intermediary, returned from money reported by Tracfin and who prompted the police to listen to him and thus go up the whole sector.
The hearing must take place at the end of March at the Pontoise court.
