拍品专文
The lady's dressing-table, with its hermed legs and decorative medallions and tablets in the George III 'Roman' manner, has a laurel-festooned façade reflecting the Louis XVI style introduced in the 1760s by the architect William Chambers (d. 1792) and specialist Paris-trained inlayers such as George Haupt (d. 1784) and Christopher Furlogh (d. after 1787). The top's medallion-centred tablets each display a pastoral trophy of a Shepherdess' bonnet and crook, while the frieze is festooned with poetic laurels that wreath the central palm-flowered pattera and thread through sunflowered-medallions above the legs.
While the pastoral medallions may have been the work of a specialist inlayer, other elements, such as the laurels festooned through paterae medallions on the legs, relate to work executed in the 1770s by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) of St. Martin's Lane. In particular, the chain-linked and flowered paterae hooked onto the drawers correspond to the inlaid frieze of a pair of side tables which are likely to have been supplied by the firm to Sir Edward Knatchbull (d. 1798) of Mersham-le-Hatch (sold by the Knatchbull family, in these Rooms, 4 July 1991, lot 61).
The dressing-table appears to have been executed in the same workshops as a pair of similar tables that have been associated with George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV. One bearing a Cardiff Castle repair inscription for 1869 was in the Works of Art from the Bute Collection sale, in these Rooms, 3 July 1996, lot 20. The other was formerly in the collection of Colonel H.H. Mulliner and is discussed in his The Decorative Arts of England, 1660-1780, London, n.d., fig. 25, and was sold in these Rooms, 10 July 1924, lot 60.
A bonheur-du-jour with almost identical swagged medallion inlay, was sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 19 April 1991, lot 194.
While the pastoral medallions may have been the work of a specialist inlayer, other elements, such as the laurels festooned through paterae medallions on the legs, relate to work executed in the 1770s by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) of St. Martin's Lane. In particular, the chain-linked and flowered paterae hooked onto the drawers correspond to the inlaid frieze of a pair of side tables which are likely to have been supplied by the firm to Sir Edward Knatchbull (d. 1798) of Mersham-le-Hatch (sold by the Knatchbull family, in these Rooms, 4 July 1991, lot 61).
The dressing-table appears to have been executed in the same workshops as a pair of similar tables that have been associated with George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV. One bearing a Cardiff Castle repair inscription for 1869 was in the Works of Art from the Bute Collection sale, in these Rooms, 3 July 1996, lot 20. The other was formerly in the collection of Colonel H.H. Mulliner and is discussed in his The Decorative Arts of England, 1660-1780, London, n.d., fig. 25, and was sold in these Rooms, 10 July 1924, lot 60.
A bonheur-du-jour with almost identical swagged medallion inlay, was sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 19 April 1991, lot 194.