Lot Essay
This exotic dressing-table desk, designed for a bedroom apartment window-pier, relates to the George III serpentined 'bureau-dressing-table' with drawer-pedestals such as Thomas Chippendale illustrated in his The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director of 1762 (pl. LXIII). He is also credited with the 'toilet-table' pattern, featuring the loper-supported and hinged top concealing a rising toilet-glass and lidded toilet-compartments, illustrated in the Society of Upholsterer's Genteel Household Furniture in the Present Taste, circa 1765, part II, pl. 35.
This Chinese dressing-table's form, as well as the golden vignettes of lakeside-pavilions, correspond to those of a mid-18th Century lacquer dressing-table fitted with a frieze drawer in the Colonel H.H. Mulliner collection (H.H Mulliner, The Decorative Arts in England 1660-1780, London), while its decorative vine-trails and looped handles feature on a similar folding-top dressing-table of slightly later date sold from the late Lady de Trafford Collection, in these Rooms, 3 March 1994, lot 102. A rectangular lacquer dressing-table, also with frieze drawer, was acquired for Osterley Park, Middlesex by Robert Child (d.1782).
There is a similar dressing-table in the bedroom of the King's Apartments at The Royal Pavilion, Brighton (J. Rutherford, The Royal Pavilion, Guidebook, 1994, p. 60).
This Chinese dressing-table's form, as well as the golden vignettes of lakeside-pavilions, correspond to those of a mid-18th Century lacquer dressing-table fitted with a frieze drawer in the Colonel H.H. Mulliner collection (H.H Mulliner, The Decorative Arts in England 1660-1780, London), while its decorative vine-trails and looped handles feature on a similar folding-top dressing-table of slightly later date sold from the late Lady de Trafford Collection, in these Rooms, 3 March 1994, lot 102. A rectangular lacquer dressing-table, also with frieze drawer, was acquired for Osterley Park, Middlesex by Robert Child (d.1782).
There is a similar dressing-table in the bedroom of the King's Apartments at The Royal Pavilion, Brighton (J. Rutherford, The Royal Pavilion, Guidebook, 1994, p. 60).