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Lot Essay
The oak writing-table has stretcher-tied pillars that are Solomonic-spiralled in the 'Elizabethan' style popularised through the ebony furniture collection assembled by the antiquarian Horace Walpole (d. 1797). Walpole's 'Elizabethan' taste was revived in William IV's reign, when the Bond Street dealer John Webb, a contributor to the New Palace of Westminster furnishings, had one of his 'Walpole' chairs illustrated in Henry Shaw's Specimens of Ancient Furniture, 1838 (pl. XIII).
This table formed part of the romantic Williamite furnishings introduced at the ancient O'Quin mansion at Adare, County Limerick by Windham Henry Wyndham-Quin, 2nd Earl of Dunraven (d. 1850). He prided himself as a 'dabbler in architecture', and replaced the ancient Prior's Refectory with a baronial banqueting-hall. He wrote enthusiastically about the transformation in 1839: 'I Never saw the place look so strikingly handsome' and commented on the Cathedral air that he introduced to the great Gallery on the first floor: 'One could run up and down stairs all day to look at it. It is so very beautiful'. While in London in 1840 he consulted the antiquarian architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham (d. 1847), author of Plans for Westminster Hall, 1822 and Working Drawings of Gothic Ornaments etc., 1824; and later in the 1840's he employed A.W.N. Pugin (d. 1852), particularly celebrated for his New Palace of Westminster furnishings. This elegant table, with its chamfered enrichments and fretted escutcheons, relates in particular to Pugin's New Palace style and may have been supplied by John Gregory Crace (d. 1889) of Crace & Son, Wigmore Street with whom he worked so closely.
This table formed part of the romantic Williamite furnishings introduced at the ancient O'Quin mansion at Adare, County Limerick by Windham Henry Wyndham-Quin, 2nd Earl of Dunraven (d. 1850). He prided himself as a 'dabbler in architecture', and replaced the ancient Prior's Refectory with a baronial banqueting-hall. He wrote enthusiastically about the transformation in 1839: 'I Never saw the place look so strikingly handsome' and commented on the Cathedral air that he introduced to the great Gallery on the first floor: 'One could run up and down stairs all day to look at it. It is so very beautiful'. While in London in 1840 he consulted the antiquarian architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham (d. 1847), author of Plans for Westminster Hall, 1822 and Working Drawings of Gothic Ornaments etc., 1824; and later in the 1840's he employed A.W.N. Pugin (d. 1852), particularly celebrated for his New Palace of Westminster furnishings. This elegant table, with its chamfered enrichments and fretted escutcheons, relates in particular to Pugin's New Palace style and may have been supplied by John Gregory Crace (d. 1889) of Crace & Son, Wigmore Street with whom he worked so closely.