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Lot Essay
This elliptic and hollow-cornered table-top pattern was introduced around 1780 and featured in Messrs A. Hepplewhite & Co.'s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788 (pl. 66). This golden table has a flower-wreathed border of Venus's sacred roses entwined by convulvulus and this garlands a central grisaille tablet, whose pastoral scene celebrates lyric poetry and depicts a Grecian lyre laid beside a temple that is attended by nymphs accompanied by Cupid.
Flower festooned furniture was also popularised around 1780s by the Mayfair botanical artist George Brookshaw (d. 1823) of Curzon Street and Great Marlborough Street, who served as Peintre-ébéniste to George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. A related flower-painted table of this form has been attributed to the Long Acre firm, titled from 1790 as Seddon, Sons and Shackleton (C. Gilbert, 'Seddon, Sons and Shackleton', Furniture History, 1997, pp. 1-5, fig. 21).
Flower festooned furniture was also popularised around 1780s by the Mayfair botanical artist George Brookshaw (d. 1823) of Curzon Street and Great Marlborough Street, who served as Peintre-ébéniste to George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. A related flower-painted table of this form has been attributed to the Long Acre firm, titled from 1790 as Seddon, Sons and Shackleton (C. Gilbert, 'Seddon, Sons and Shackleton', Furniture History, 1997, pp. 1-5, fig. 21).