Lot Essay
This plinth-supported writing-table, with its golden bronze and wood enrichments, is designed in the early 19th Century 'antique' or Grecian style after the French manner introduced by the connoisseur Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807. Its frieze is enriched with palmettes and stars and its trestle-ends are formed of crossed lion-monopodiae. The latter are derived from Hope's Roman stool pattern (op. cit., pl. 12, fig. 4).
A similarly inspired writing or sofa table, with bronzed monopodiae and galleried top, was supplied around 1810 to Southill Park, Bedfordshire (M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, London, 1948, p. 124, fig. 130). The ormolu enrichments feature on furniture supplied by Gillows of Lancaster for Shugborough, Staffordshire (J. Martin Robinson, Shugborough, 1989, p. 76). The lion capitals are close to those on a pair of tables at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire, which are illustrated in M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1965, fig. 119.
A similarly inspired writing or sofa table, with bronzed monopodiae and galleried top, was supplied around 1810 to Southill Park, Bedfordshire (M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, London, 1948, p. 124, fig. 130). The ormolu enrichments feature on furniture supplied by Gillows of Lancaster for Shugborough, Staffordshire (J. Martin Robinson, Shugborough, 1989, p. 76). The lion capitals are close to those on a pair of tables at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire, which are illustrated in M. Jourdain, Regency Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1965, fig. 119.