A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED SATINWOOD, TULIPWOOD AND YEWWOOD WRITING-TABLE

The lady's golden elegant satinwood and ormolu-enriched writing-table (bureau-plât), with china-railed cabinet (cartonnier), is ribbon-banded with rosy tulipwood and mosaic-parquetried in 'Roman' tablets and medallions of marbled yew. Conceived in the George III French/antique fashion of the 1770s, it is embellished in appropriate manner to evoke lyric-poetry's triumph with the Sun god Apollo's Mt. Parnassus role as leader of the Muses of Artistic inspiration. The pier-table's reed-edged top is elliptically curved in a cupid-bow, whose 'tablet' corners are canted above above Grecian truss-scrolled and herm-tapered pilasters that are wreathed in Roman foliage. Its drawer-fitted and reed-wreathed frieze has a lambrequined apron shaped like the top, but while the latter is inlaid with 'French' hollow-cornered tablets, this displays a medallioned 'target' between hollow-sided tablets centred by foliated handles. In addition, Apollonian sunflowered paterae wreath the medallioned 'target' of the 'commode' doors, which conceal the drawers and paper 'pigeon-holes' of the cartonnier.

This writing-table form, popularly known as a bonheur du jour evolved in the 1770s from the 'Library Table' such as featured in a pattern-book entitled, Household Furniture in Genteel Taste (1760, pt. II, pl.62). It was issued by a Society of London Upholsterers and Cabinet-Makers, to which the celebrated Soho firm of John Mayhew and William Ince belonged. This firm is credited with the manufacture of a related yew-veneered bureau-writing-table at Burghley, Lincolnshire; and a related 'bonheur du jour table' that was formerly in the possession of the Earls of Craven at Combe Abbey, Warwickshire (see G. Beard and C. Gilbert (eds), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 594; and C. Latham, In English Homes, 3rd ed., London, 1909, p. 300).

Special Notice

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Provenance

The Rev. Stephen Pritchard, vicar of Much Wenlock.
Mrs Pritchard left to her son Tom Pritchard, who left it to his cousin Sir Joseph Prestwich, by whom presented to his daughter
Catherine Scott.
Sarah Cave, Baroness Braye (1768-1862), Stanford Hall, Rugby, Warwickshire and by descent to her daughter
Catherine Otway-Cave, Countess of Beauchamp (d. 1875), Madresfield Court, Malvern, after 1850.
With J. J Wolff, Antiques, Ltd. New York, 1955.
Walter P. Chrysler Jr.
Anonymous sale, Christie's New York, 24-25 January 2001, lot 560.

Exhibited

New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Art Treasures Exhibition, 1955.
Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art.