.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The table, conceived in the George II antique French manner, has a vase-swelled baluster in the manner of table patterns issued in the architect James Gibbs's Book of Architecture, 1728 (see T.A. Strange, English Furniture and Decoration, London, 1950, p. 48). Its octagon-compartment top is wreathed by a flowered ribbon band of iridescent shell (mother-of-pearl) flower-heads and foliated sprays in the 'Indian' manner. These are enclosed in golden brass inlay, whose fretted bands tie trefoiled sprays of engraved Roman foliage in the spandrels, while the elegantly serpentined legs and pad feet are similarly inlaid with 'Venus' shells emerging from husk-enriched Roman foliage.
Such 'boulle-inlaid' furniture formed part of the fashionable tea quipage of the period, and relates to the inlaid 'sarcophagus' tea-chest illustrated in the 1740s trade-card of Messrs. Landall and Gordon of Little Argyle Street (Gilbert and Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture, London, 1993, fig. 12). Related decoration features on a scalloped tea-table bearing the Royal crown, which together with another similar table, has been attributed to the Moravian cabinet-maker and embellisher of musical instruments Frederick Hintz (d. 1776). Hintz, trading at 'The Porcupine', Newport Street advertised in 1738, the sale of mahogany 'tea tables, tea chests, tea-boards etc. all curiously [finely wrought] made and inlaid with fine figures of Brass and mother-of-pearl' (ibid., fig. 149, pl. XXIV and The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 434).
Such 'boulle-inlaid' furniture formed part of the fashionable tea quipage of the period, and relates to the inlaid 'sarcophagus' tea-chest illustrated in the 1740s trade-card of Messrs. Landall and Gordon of Little Argyle Street (Gilbert and Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture, London, 1993, fig. 12). Related decoration features on a scalloped tea-table bearing the Royal crown, which together with another similar table, has been attributed to the Moravian cabinet-maker and embellisher of musical instruments Frederick Hintz (d. 1776). Hintz, trading at 'The Porcupine', Newport Street advertised in 1738, the sale of mahogany 'tea tables, tea chests, tea-boards etc. all curiously [finely wrought] made and inlaid with fine figures of Brass and mother-of-pearl' (ibid., fig. 149, pl. XXIV and The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 434).