Lot Essay
This writing-table's elegant 'antique' design reflects the French style derived from Percier and Fontaine's Receuil de Decorations Intérieures, 1802, and promoted by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1831) in the furnishing of his Duchess Street mansion/museum. The table, veneered in richly figured black rosewood wreathed by a flowered ormolu ribbon-band, also has its top inlaid with a 'boulle' brass and ebony ribbon-band. Laurels wreathe the elliptic tazza-like bowl of the plinth-supported trestles, whose form recalls the celebrated sarcophagus know as the 'tomb of Agrippa'. These stretcher-tied trestles, with Grecian palm-capped pilasters, palm-flowered bacchic-masks and bacchic lion-feet, derive from one of Hope's tables. The latter, with laurel-wrapped ends to its trestles and central Egyptian bacchic-masks, was illustrated in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807 (pl. 12, nos. 1 and 2). In place of lion-masks, as on the engraved table, this one has ram's -masks, such as feature on Roman marble candelabra and also on one of Hope's library-chairs (Household Furniture, pl. 22a, nos. 5 and 6). The pattern for the palm-flower bas-reliefs in the frieze was likewise taken from Hope's library-desk illustrated in Household Furniture (pl. II, no. I); while the laurel branches also featured on a cabinet (op. cit. pl. 2).
This writing-table would have been designed to accompany Grecian sofas standing out from a mantelpiece. It can be attributed to George Oakley, who had Furniture Warerooms and his Manufactory in St. Paul's Churchyard, as well as a fashionable 'Magazine of General and Superb Upholstery and Cabinet Furniture' in Old Bond Street. In 1801 the Journal des Luxus und der Moden noted 'everyone of taste and discrimination' is 'making their purchases at Oakley's, the most tasteful of London's cabinet-makers', while a Wiemar newspaper of 1804 also recorded 'All people with taste buy their furniture at Oakley's'. Three years later, another German writer noted that the firm was 'famous for goods of the latest fashion'. This attribution relies on a table of this pattern, whose exotic veneer of Indian calamanderwood and 'boulle' inlay of starred ribbon-guilloche, corresponds to that of a circular drawing-room table supplied by Oakley in 1810 for Papworth Hall, Cambridgeshire (F. Collard, Regency Furniture, Woodbridge, 1985 p. 318).
As George Smith noted in his 'Household Funiture' of 1808, which featured a closely related design for a 'ladies Dressing Table to accompany a State bedchamber' as plate 73 (first published in 1806), 'if made in mahogany, [this design] may have all the ornamental parts carved in lime-tree and bronzed, or carved in the mahogany with the rest of the table: should rose-wood be preferred, the whole of the ornaments may be finished in gold'. The enduring popularity of Hope's design, however, can be seen as late as 1825 on a cylinder-bureau supplied by Jacob-Desmalter to King George IV for Windsor Castle. Recorded in the King's bedroom at Windsor by 1827, the cylinder-bureau features a closely related, although inverted laurel-wrapped drum to the side.
The carved enrichments of this table would almost certainly have been supplied by a specialist carver. It is, therefore of interest to note that Thomas Hope promoted the Flemish-born carver Peter Bogaert (d.1819) of Tottenham Court Road for his own furnishings at Duchess Street, and Bogaert was in turn patronised at Carlton House by George, Prince of Wales in 1809.
HENRY PHILIP HOPE AND 3, SEYMOUR PLACE
Henry Philip Hope (1774-1839), a wealthy bachelor, philanthropist and connoisseur, is perhaps most celebrated for his remarkable collection of diamonds. Extremely close to his brother Thomas, who commissioned a bust of his brother from Flaxman in 1803 for the chimneypiece at Duchess Street at the cost of £84, he lived at 3, Seymour Place, Hyde Park and Chart Park, Surrey, a house built upon the lands adjoining his brother's at Deepdene. Henry Hope was much involved in the remodelling of the house at Duchess Street and erected a North Gallery to exhibit his brother's Italian paintings alongside his own collection of Dutch and Flemish masters. His own London house, 3 Seymour Place, was situated in a cul-de-sac at the west end of Curzon Street overlooking Hyde Park. Essentially a typical London town-house, it was embellished with a two-storey loggia supported on the first floor by four caryatids in the Greek revival style. This table was acquired, along with Seymour Place, by an ancestor of the present owner in the second quarter of the 19th Century, while Henry Philip Hope himself moved to Arklow House, Connaught Place in 1833. 3 Seymour Place itself was remodelled by J. B. Papworth in 1835 and it is, therefore known only through an 1813 watercolour inscribed 'View of the back front of H. Ph. Hope's house towards Hyde park in Seymour Place 1813' (now in the Yale Centre for British Art, inv. No. B 1977.14.4765).
This writing-table would have been designed to accompany Grecian sofas standing out from a mantelpiece. It can be attributed to George Oakley, who had Furniture Warerooms and his Manufactory in St. Paul's Churchyard, as well as a fashionable 'Magazine of General and Superb Upholstery and Cabinet Furniture' in Old Bond Street. In 1801 the Journal des Luxus und der Moden noted 'everyone of taste and discrimination' is 'making their purchases at Oakley's, the most tasteful of London's cabinet-makers', while a Wiemar newspaper of 1804 also recorded 'All people with taste buy their furniture at Oakley's'. Three years later, another German writer noted that the firm was 'famous for goods of the latest fashion'. This attribution relies on a table of this pattern, whose exotic veneer of Indian calamanderwood and 'boulle' inlay of starred ribbon-guilloche, corresponds to that of a circular drawing-room table supplied by Oakley in 1810 for Papworth Hall, Cambridgeshire (F. Collard, Regency Furniture, Woodbridge, 1985 p. 318).
As George Smith noted in his 'Household Funiture' of 1808, which featured a closely related design for a 'ladies Dressing Table to accompany a State bedchamber' as plate 73 (first published in 1806), 'if made in mahogany, [this design] may have all the ornamental parts carved in lime-tree and bronzed, or carved in the mahogany with the rest of the table: should rose-wood be preferred, the whole of the ornaments may be finished in gold'. The enduring popularity of Hope's design, however, can be seen as late as 1825 on a cylinder-bureau supplied by Jacob-Desmalter to King George IV for Windsor Castle. Recorded in the King's bedroom at Windsor by 1827, the cylinder-bureau features a closely related, although inverted laurel-wrapped drum to the side.
The carved enrichments of this table would almost certainly have been supplied by a specialist carver. It is, therefore of interest to note that Thomas Hope promoted the Flemish-born carver Peter Bogaert (d.1819) of Tottenham Court Road for his own furnishings at Duchess Street, and Bogaert was in turn patronised at Carlton House by George, Prince of Wales in 1809.
HENRY PHILIP HOPE AND 3, SEYMOUR PLACE
Henry Philip Hope (1774-1839), a wealthy bachelor, philanthropist and connoisseur, is perhaps most celebrated for his remarkable collection of diamonds. Extremely close to his brother Thomas, who commissioned a bust of his brother from Flaxman in 1803 for the chimneypiece at Duchess Street at the cost of £84, he lived at 3, Seymour Place, Hyde Park and Chart Park, Surrey, a house built upon the lands adjoining his brother's at Deepdene. Henry Hope was much involved in the remodelling of the house at Duchess Street and erected a North Gallery to exhibit his brother's Italian paintings alongside his own collection of Dutch and Flemish masters. His own London house, 3 Seymour Place, was situated in a cul-de-sac at the west end of Curzon Street overlooking Hyde Park. Essentially a typical London town-house, it was embellished with a two-storey loggia supported on the first floor by four caryatids in the Greek revival style. This table was acquired, along with Seymour Place, by an ancestor of the present owner in the second quarter of the 19th Century, while Henry Philip Hope himself moved to Arklow House, Connaught Place in 1833. 3 Seymour Place itself was remodelled by J. B. Papworth in 1835 and it is, therefore known only through an 1813 watercolour inscribed 'View of the back front of H. Ph. Hope's house towards Hyde park in Seymour Place 1813' (now in the Yale Centre for British Art, inv. No. B 1977.14.4765).