MID-19TH CENTURY

The 'French' fashioned writing-table features a style of marquetry associated with 'cabinet inlayer and buhl manufacturer' Robert Blake (d.1881), following the establishment of his Stephen Street manufactory in the later 1820s; and continued by the 'cabinet inlayers' Messrs George Blake and Bros. The taste for such tables was promoted by the fashionable London art dealer and furniture maker Edward Holmes Baldock, who retired in 1843 and was responsible for supplying such furniture to the 5th Duke of Buccleuch in the early 1840s (see C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds, 1978, vol. II, No.395; and vol III p.729).