Lot Essay
The screen's moulded frame with flowered centre and corners relates to picture frame patterns illustrated in D. Marot's Nouveau Livre d'Ornements pour l'Utilité des Sculpteurs et Orfèvres of circa 1700. With its fluted and cassolette-capped columnar supports tied with a fretted ribbon-guilloche stretcher, it relates to a Marot-style firescreen at Hampton Court Palace dating from around 1700 and attributed to John Pelletier (d.1723). One of the same period is at Knole Park, Kent and a third was supplied around 1715 to Richard Temple, Baron Cobham, and is attributed to James Moore (d. circa 1733; see: R. Edwards The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, pp. 434 and 435, figs. 3,4 and 6)
There is branded furniture at Knole, Kent, that came from Whitehall Palace, burned in 1698, but the brand is WP.
There is branded furniture at Knole, Kent, that came from Whitehall Palace, burned in 1698, but the brand is WP.