Paul Iribe, attributed to secretary with amboyna wood, around 1920.

Magnificent secretary assigned to Paul Iribe, created in the 1920s, powerfully illustrating the artist's unique vocabulary at the intersection of decorative arts, drawing, and illustration. Made of spectacularly veined amboyna burl, the piece is distinguished by a complex and vertical architecture, animated by a drop-down front with a pronounced slope that breaks with the strict geometry of the structure. The tall, slender legs, composed of four tapered feet with fine geometric patterns, give the whole an almost graphic elegance, typical of Paul Iribe's explorations of line and silhouette. This verticality recalls certain stylised figures found in his drawings and decorative projects, where the human body becomes a structuring axis of the composition. The drop-down front is adorned with a central figurative panel, depicting a female angel treated in a synthetic and sculptural manner. This motif directly evokes Paul Iribe's graphic universe, akin to that of George Barbier or certain illustrations published in Le Témoin, a magazine he founded in 1906. Opening onto a very functional workspace, composed of several storage compartments and a veneered top. The whole is topped by a drawer finished with two handles in the shape of stylised passementerie, a particularly characteristic element of this period. This taste for the transposition of textile or organic elements into rigid and decorative motifs is found in several of his decoration projects. The entire piece of furniture is situated within an aesthetic in transition between late Art Nouveau and emerging Art Deco, where the richness of materials and the sensuality of forms coexist with a desire for modernisation. This cabinet thus bears witness to Iribe's unique contribution to French decorative arts, marked by a deeply personal and resolutely modern vision.