Lot Essay
THE ST. GILES'S LACQUER COMMODES
These magnificent George III Chinese lacquer-veneered commodes are serpentined in the elegant French 'picturesque' manner, and combine Roman-fashioned legs terminating in bacchic satyr goat hooves with legs that are hocked in the manner adopted for lacquered china-tables. These gorgeous masterpieces of mid-18th Century London fashion typify the 'St. Martin's Lane' eclectic style and love of fanciful 'variety' promoted by William Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, 1753, and the three editions of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, published between l754 and l762. They were commissioned for St. Giles's House, Dorset and the 'Dressing Room' of its 'new' Bedroom Apartment, created in the early 1760s by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1771), George III's Lord Lieutenant of the County of Dorset.
These commodes were foremost amongst the furniture that earned St. Giles's fame for over a century as the 'Chinese Chippendale' house par excellence, but they can now be attributed to his celebrated neighbour John Cobb (d. 1778), court cabinet-maker to George III.
THE 'CHINESE CHIPPENDALE' STYLE
Chinese taste was fuelled at the start of George III's reign by the architectural works and publications of the court 'architect', Sir William Chambers, author of Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, dresses etc., 1759, and The Plans, Elevations and Sections ...of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey, l763, which included his remarkable Pagoda. Chambers gained his expertise on China while in the service of the Swedish East India Company, and it was these trading companies that enlivened the English interior with exotic lacquered furniture dressed with golden flowers and landscapes. While such Chinese cabinet-work was generally in the form of rectangular chests, dressing-tables and bureaux, the bniste Pierre Langlois (d. l765) had established his Tottenham Court Road workshops in the l750s, and probably introduced to London the Parisian technique of moulding lacquer to the serpentined forms lauded by William Hogarth. It was Langlois, for instance, who metamorphasised a lacquer screen into commodes for Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill in 1763 (see P. Thornton and W. Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois, bniste - Part I', Connoisseur, December 1971, p. 385). The Parisian technique of moulding lacquer panels was published by Andre-Jacob Roubo in his L'Art du Menuisier Ebeniste, Paris, l772.
CHIPPENDALE'S FRENCH ANTIQUE STYLE
In l761 Thomas Chippendale engraved a related pattern for a three-drawered 'commode table' that was illustrated in the third edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, l762 (pl. LXVII). This likewise featured festive bacchic hooves in the Roman or antique style promoted both by Chambers and his fellow court 'architect' Robert Adam (d. l792). While Chippendale expected the feet to be carved, as in the present case, he also noted that they could be 'of brass, if required'.
CHIPPENDALE'S 'MODERN' STYLE
When launching his first Director, Chippendale advertised in 1753 that 'The most able artists' had provided improved designs of Household Furniture in the 'Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste'. Ornamental profusion was represented in his Director, l754, by French-fashioned drawing-room chairs, whose needlework or tapestry upholstery depicted Chinese gardens with monumental shrubs inhabited by birds and insects etc. after the ancient fashion popularised by Messrs. Stalker and Parker's Treatise on Japanning, l688 (Director, pls. XX and XXI). The Chinese elements were no doubt contributed by Chippendale's co-author Matthias Darly, who in the same year published with George Edwards, A New Book of Chinese Designs, l754. Here, the faades of the St. Giles's commodes display tablets of lacquer landscapes and pavilions within zig-zagged ribbon-guilloche frames, that are japanned in the Chinese manner, such as Chippendale had adopted for a 'Jappan'd Cloaths-press' with lacquer veneered landscapes that he supplied in l759 to William, 5th Earl of Dumfries (see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, l978, pp. 134, l38 and fig. 237). Appropriately the commodes' golden landscapes are accompanied by Arcadian satyr-hooves emerging from the Roman acanthus foliage that festoons the canted corners; while their golden ormolu-wrought 'furniture' comprises fretted escutcheon plates, whose foliated embossments are wreathed by rich berried laurel branches and swagged by French reed-enriched handles.
THE 4TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
The 4th Earl of Shaftesbury was an amateur and patron of the arts and devoted himself to the aggrandisement of his Dorset mansion, which had been built by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1683), Charles II's Lord Chancellor. For its antique-style embellishement, recalling the Roman manner of Andrea Palladio and Inigo Jones, he employed Henry Flitcroft (d. 1767), a proteg of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and Stephen Wright (d. 1780), Master Mason and Deputy Surveyor of George III's Board of Works. For its fashionable furnishing he was able to utilise his library copy of Chippendale's Director, as, when Chippendale first advertised for four hundred subscribers for his New Book of Designs his first wife Susannah, Countess of Shaftesbury (d. 1758) had been amongst the quartet of titled ladies who took out a subscription. The commission for these commodes would have followed his second marriage, which took place in 1759 to Mary Bouverie, daughter of his neighbour Viscount Folkestone of Longford Castle, Wiltshire.
THE ORNAMENT OF THE COMMODES
Their design was intended to harmonise with the architecture of the dressing-room, as indicated by the inscription 'Lord Shaftesbury's New Dressing Room' on the base of one drawer lining. They would have accompanied richly carved pier-glasses hanging on either side of the dressing-room window, as featured in the contemporary bedroom apartment at Hopetoun House, Scotland. In 1767 when James Cullen was advising at Hopetoun on the introduction of commodes, which displayed richly wrought Chinese furniture, he explained their decorative role: 'in grand appartments [they] are more intended to furnish and adorn than for real use' (see A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, l968, p. 66 and figs. 416 and 417). However the use of cedar to line the drawers would suggest these commodes were made for storing clothes in a bedroom apartment
The lacquer veneer for the tops and sides of the commode no doubt derived from an early 18th Century screen that had been inherited by the Earl. Their garden pavilion scenes include trumpeters and drummers celebrating in a raised entrance turret, guarded by a Buddhistic lion, and riders entering a courtyard that contains a high flag pole. Similar scenes on a contemporary lacquer screen, are said to depict scenes from the life of Kue Tzu (A.D. 697-781), a native of Hua-chou in Shensi and one of the most renowned Chinese generals (sold in these Rooms, 30 May l96l, lot 375).
JOHN COBB, CABINET-MAKER TO GEORGE III
John Cobb (d. 1778) was the son-in-law of the renowned early 18th Century cabinet-maker Giles Grendey, a leading manufacturer of japanned furniture in the reign of George II. In 175l he established his partnership with William Vile (d. 1767) and expanded four years later to absorb the neighbouring St. Martin's Lane premises of William Hallett (d. l78l). The latter, who had been employed at St. Giles's House in the 1740s and early 1750s, was according to Horace Walpole, writing in 1755, famed as a manufacturer of 'Chinese' furniture.
On the accession of George III, Vile and Cobb were granted a royal warrant in 176l to supply furniture to the Crown under the direction of the Master of the Great Wardrobe. Some of their most celebrated Royal commissions are discussed by Geoffrey Beard, 'Vile and Cobb, eighteenth-century London furniture makers', Antiques, June l990, pp. l394 -l405.
The huge expense of manufacturing lacquer-veneered commodes would merit the commissioning of special 'furniture' mounts, and it is likely that these foliate mounts, which would have been described as 'large Handsome wrought furniture' were invented for them. Indeed it is likely that these commodes served as the prototype for a mahogany 'Commode chest of drawers' with the same patterned handles, that was invoiced in l766 to James West of Alscot Park, Warwickshire, and supplied by John Cobb. The Alscot commode also features an apron, whose pelta-scrolled lambrequin harmonises with 'Chinese' hocked legs (see H. Honour, Cabinet Makers and Furniture Designers, London, l969, p.112; and L. Wood, op cit., p. 5l, no. 35).
This pattern of wrought furniture appears on other mahogany commodes supplied in the l760s for Blickling Hall, Norfolk and Burghley, Lincolnshire. They also appear on a closely related mahogany commode that was presented in l964 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Irwin Untermeyer (discussed in L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, l994, pp. 48, 51, no.36 and p. 53, no.40. )
ST. GILES'S HOUSE
These commodes received special mention, when the renowned furniture historian R.W. Symonds wrote the 1956 guide book to St. Giles's House. He noted:
'The pair of serpentine chests-of-drawers (or commodes as they were called in the l8th Century) on each side of the door is of rarity and interest. The Chinese lacquer work with which these chests are decorated came originally from an imported screen. The English cabinet-maker sawed the leaves of the screen down the middle so that the lacquer decoration was on a thin sheet; this was then cut to the shape of the drawer fronts and the top of the chest and glued on. This construction accounts for the mutilation of the Chinese design - the figure on horseback on the bottom drawer of the commode left of the door has half the head missing. The sides and edge of the framing round the drawer fronts have been decorated by the cabinet-maker who has copied the Chinese lacquer in paint, gold dust and varnish. This pair of commodes, probably formed part of the bedroom furniture of the 5th Earl, for it was made about 1770'.
CONSTRUCTION
Apart from the cedar lined-drawers secured inside by concave quarter-fillets, also made of cedar, these commodes have the additional unusual constructional feature of the sides being constructed partly of mahogany and partly of oak. This feature was presumably intended to be more stable that a large panel of either.
MALLETT'S RESTORATION OF THE COMMODES IN 1968
In June 1968 Mallett invoiced Lord Shaftesbury for restoration they had carried out on the pair of commodes. The restoration consisted of the following:
'Repairing shrunken panels in the back of one commode; pulling up edge of one top; filling various splits in back of drawers; replacing missing length of cockbead; adjusting drawers and supplying two keys with period bows.
Straightening tops and veneering undersides to prevent further movement, making up front edge previously planed down.
Carefully removing perished varnish on all surfaces, filling chips and splits in the lacquer; fully restoring and reviving decoration; lacquering and wax-polishing.
Cleaning, burnishing and lacquering handles backplates and escutcheons'.
The total cost of the restoration was 450.
These magnificent George III Chinese lacquer-veneered commodes are serpentined in the elegant French 'picturesque' manner, and combine Roman-fashioned legs terminating in bacchic satyr goat hooves with legs that are hocked in the manner adopted for lacquered china-tables. These gorgeous masterpieces of mid-18th Century London fashion typify the 'St. Martin's Lane' eclectic style and love of fanciful 'variety' promoted by William Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty, 1753, and the three editions of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director, published between l754 and l762. They were commissioned for St. Giles's House, Dorset and the 'Dressing Room' of its 'new' Bedroom Apartment, created in the early 1760s by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1771), George III's Lord Lieutenant of the County of Dorset.
These commodes were foremost amongst the furniture that earned St. Giles's fame for over a century as the 'Chinese Chippendale' house par excellence, but they can now be attributed to his celebrated neighbour John Cobb (d. 1778), court cabinet-maker to George III.
THE 'CHINESE CHIPPENDALE' STYLE
Chinese taste was fuelled at the start of George III's reign by the architectural works and publications of the court 'architect', Sir William Chambers, author of Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, dresses etc., 1759, and The Plans, Elevations and Sections ...of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey, l763, which included his remarkable Pagoda. Chambers gained his expertise on China while in the service of the Swedish East India Company, and it was these trading companies that enlivened the English interior with exotic lacquered furniture dressed with golden flowers and landscapes. While such Chinese cabinet-work was generally in the form of rectangular chests, dressing-tables and bureaux, the bniste Pierre Langlois (d. l765) had established his Tottenham Court Road workshops in the l750s, and probably introduced to London the Parisian technique of moulding lacquer to the serpentined forms lauded by William Hogarth. It was Langlois, for instance, who metamorphasised a lacquer screen into commodes for Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill in 1763 (see P. Thornton and W. Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois, bniste - Part I', Connoisseur, December 1971, p. 385). The Parisian technique of moulding lacquer panels was published by Andre-Jacob Roubo in his L'Art du Menuisier Ebeniste, Paris, l772.
CHIPPENDALE'S FRENCH ANTIQUE STYLE
In l761 Thomas Chippendale engraved a related pattern for a three-drawered 'commode table' that was illustrated in the third edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, l762 (pl. LXVII). This likewise featured festive bacchic hooves in the Roman or antique style promoted both by Chambers and his fellow court 'architect' Robert Adam (d. l792). While Chippendale expected the feet to be carved, as in the present case, he also noted that they could be 'of brass, if required'.
CHIPPENDALE'S 'MODERN' STYLE
When launching his first Director, Chippendale advertised in 1753 that 'The most able artists' had provided improved designs of Household Furniture in the 'Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste'. Ornamental profusion was represented in his Director, l754, by French-fashioned drawing-room chairs, whose needlework or tapestry upholstery depicted Chinese gardens with monumental shrubs inhabited by birds and insects etc. after the ancient fashion popularised by Messrs. Stalker and Parker's Treatise on Japanning, l688 (Director, pls. XX and XXI). The Chinese elements were no doubt contributed by Chippendale's co-author Matthias Darly, who in the same year published with George Edwards, A New Book of Chinese Designs, l754. Here, the faades of the St. Giles's commodes display tablets of lacquer landscapes and pavilions within zig-zagged ribbon-guilloche frames, that are japanned in the Chinese manner, such as Chippendale had adopted for a 'Jappan'd Cloaths-press' with lacquer veneered landscapes that he supplied in l759 to William, 5th Earl of Dumfries (see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, l978, pp. 134, l38 and fig. 237). Appropriately the commodes' golden landscapes are accompanied by Arcadian satyr-hooves emerging from the Roman acanthus foliage that festoons the canted corners; while their golden ormolu-wrought 'furniture' comprises fretted escutcheon plates, whose foliated embossments are wreathed by rich berried laurel branches and swagged by French reed-enriched handles.
THE 4TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
The 4th Earl of Shaftesbury was an amateur and patron of the arts and devoted himself to the aggrandisement of his Dorset mansion, which had been built by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1683), Charles II's Lord Chancellor. For its antique-style embellishement, recalling the Roman manner of Andrea Palladio and Inigo Jones, he employed Henry Flitcroft (d. 1767), a proteg of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and Stephen Wright (d. 1780), Master Mason and Deputy Surveyor of George III's Board of Works. For its fashionable furnishing he was able to utilise his library copy of Chippendale's Director, as, when Chippendale first advertised for four hundred subscribers for his New Book of Designs his first wife Susannah, Countess of Shaftesbury (d. 1758) had been amongst the quartet of titled ladies who took out a subscription. The commission for these commodes would have followed his second marriage, which took place in 1759 to Mary Bouverie, daughter of his neighbour Viscount Folkestone of Longford Castle, Wiltshire.
THE ORNAMENT OF THE COMMODES
Their design was intended to harmonise with the architecture of the dressing-room, as indicated by the inscription 'Lord Shaftesbury's New Dressing Room' on the base of one drawer lining. They would have accompanied richly carved pier-glasses hanging on either side of the dressing-room window, as featured in the contemporary bedroom apartment at Hopetoun House, Scotland. In 1767 when James Cullen was advising at Hopetoun on the introduction of commodes, which displayed richly wrought Chinese furniture, he explained their decorative role: 'in grand appartments [they] are more intended to furnish and adorn than for real use' (see A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, l968, p. 66 and figs. 416 and 417). However the use of cedar to line the drawers would suggest these commodes were made for storing clothes in a bedroom apartment
The lacquer veneer for the tops and sides of the commode no doubt derived from an early 18th Century screen that had been inherited by the Earl. Their garden pavilion scenes include trumpeters and drummers celebrating in a raised entrance turret, guarded by a Buddhistic lion, and riders entering a courtyard that contains a high flag pole. Similar scenes on a contemporary lacquer screen, are said to depict scenes from the life of Kue Tzu (A.D. 697-781), a native of Hua-chou in Shensi and one of the most renowned Chinese generals (sold in these Rooms, 30 May l96l, lot 375).
JOHN COBB, CABINET-MAKER TO GEORGE III
John Cobb (d. 1778) was the son-in-law of the renowned early 18th Century cabinet-maker Giles Grendey, a leading manufacturer of japanned furniture in the reign of George II. In 175l he established his partnership with William Vile (d. 1767) and expanded four years later to absorb the neighbouring St. Martin's Lane premises of William Hallett (d. l78l). The latter, who had been employed at St. Giles's House in the 1740s and early 1750s, was according to Horace Walpole, writing in 1755, famed as a manufacturer of 'Chinese' furniture.
On the accession of George III, Vile and Cobb were granted a royal warrant in 176l to supply furniture to the Crown under the direction of the Master of the Great Wardrobe. Some of their most celebrated Royal commissions are discussed by Geoffrey Beard, 'Vile and Cobb, eighteenth-century London furniture makers', Antiques, June l990, pp. l394 -l405.
The huge expense of manufacturing lacquer-veneered commodes would merit the commissioning of special 'furniture' mounts, and it is likely that these foliate mounts, which would have been described as 'large Handsome wrought furniture' were invented for them. Indeed it is likely that these commodes served as the prototype for a mahogany 'Commode chest of drawers' with the same patterned handles, that was invoiced in l766 to James West of Alscot Park, Warwickshire, and supplied by John Cobb. The Alscot commode also features an apron, whose pelta-scrolled lambrequin harmonises with 'Chinese' hocked legs (see H. Honour, Cabinet Makers and Furniture Designers, London, l969, p.112; and L. Wood, op cit., p. 5l, no. 35).
This pattern of wrought furniture appears on other mahogany commodes supplied in the l760s for Blickling Hall, Norfolk and Burghley, Lincolnshire. They also appear on a closely related mahogany commode that was presented in l964 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Irwin Untermeyer (discussed in L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, l994, pp. 48, 51, no.36 and p. 53, no.40. )
ST. GILES'S HOUSE
These commodes received special mention, when the renowned furniture historian R.W. Symonds wrote the 1956 guide book to St. Giles's House. He noted:
'The pair of serpentine chests-of-drawers (or commodes as they were called in the l8th Century) on each side of the door is of rarity and interest. The Chinese lacquer work with which these chests are decorated came originally from an imported screen. The English cabinet-maker sawed the leaves of the screen down the middle so that the lacquer decoration was on a thin sheet; this was then cut to the shape of the drawer fronts and the top of the chest and glued on. This construction accounts for the mutilation of the Chinese design - the figure on horseback on the bottom drawer of the commode left of the door has half the head missing. The sides and edge of the framing round the drawer fronts have been decorated by the cabinet-maker who has copied the Chinese lacquer in paint, gold dust and varnish. This pair of commodes, probably formed part of the bedroom furniture of the 5th Earl, for it was made about 1770'.
CONSTRUCTION
Apart from the cedar lined-drawers secured inside by concave quarter-fillets, also made of cedar, these commodes have the additional unusual constructional feature of the sides being constructed partly of mahogany and partly of oak. This feature was presumably intended to be more stable that a large panel of either.
MALLETT'S RESTORATION OF THE COMMODES IN 1968
In June 1968 Mallett invoiced Lord Shaftesbury for restoration they had carried out on the pair of commodes. The restoration consisted of the following:
'Repairing shrunken panels in the back of one commode; pulling up edge of one top; filling various splits in back of drawers; replacing missing length of cockbead; adjusting drawers and supplying two keys with period bows.
Straightening tops and veneering undersides to prevent further movement, making up front edge previously planed down.
Carefully removing perished varnish on all surfaces, filling chips and splits in the lacquer; fully restoring and reviving decoration; lacquering and wax-polishing.
Cleaning, burnishing and lacquering handles backplates and escutcheons'.
The total cost of the restoration was 450.