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Lot Essay
While husk-enriched Roman foliage festoons the voluted trusses and pilasters of the canted angles, the cabinet's tablet frieze displays a palm-flowered sacred urn, whose festoons of poetic laurels are held by Jupiter's eagles emerging from Roman acanthus. Jupiter's sacred oak, suspending from ring-tied guttae, festoons a laurel-wreathed medallion with a figure of Ceres bearing wheat sheaves and seated up on an altar. Palms and laurels recalling lyric poetry, and these also depend from flowered paterae at the cabinet sides. Its French composition, with baguette-draped urns a la grec, relates in particular to the designs of the Parisian architect J.C.Delafosse (d. 1789). Its figurative medallion also well-suited the interior architecture and Etruscan-styled bedroom apartments introduced in the 1770s by the architect Robert Adam (d.1792), co-author with his brother of The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, published in 1773.
During the 1760s, such pictorial marquetry became a specialty of many fashionable London firms such as Chippendale and Linnell, however the overall form, decorative details and use of heavily shaded and engraved marquetry relate this secretaire most closely to the work produced by the Golden Square firm of Mayhew and Ince. Paired fantastical beasts with acanthus-scrolled tails, draped urns and ribbon-tied figural medallions also feature on a demilune commode attributed to Mayhew and Ince in the Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight which further relates to a larger group of furniture with documentary links to the firm. This distinctive group, as discussed by Lucy Wood in her Catalogue of Commodes (no.27, pp.226-235), includes several pieces at Syon House, Middlesex and Badminton House, Gloucestershire. The Badminton commission has been associated with large payments made to the firm by the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort between 1778 and 1798 and includes an oval-topped table with a similarly drawn medallion of classical figures (L.Wood, op.cit, figs.218-219) and a pair of corner cupboards with similar tablet whose outset lower corners are hung with oversized guttae (ibid, fig.220). Furthermore, there is a group of furniture at Saltram House, Devon that includes a cabinet-on-stand whose door panels are virtually identical to the side panels on this secretaire, as illustrated in G. Wills, English Furniture 1760-1900, New York, 1971, p.109, fig.87. Also at Saltram, which was refurbished under the direction of Robert Adam, is a similar wyvern-decorated pembroke table that undisputedly belongs to the same group (see G. Wills, op.cit, p.111, pl.14). Mayhew and Ince were known to have collaborated with Adam on a number of other commissions including Croome Court, Burghley and Derby House. The husk-chain embellished angles can be compared to furniture supplied to Sir Warren Hastings for Daylesford, Worcestershire including a writing table and secretaire (see L. Boynton, 'The Furniture of Warren Hastings', Burlington, August 1970, pp.510 and 513).
The box-like form of this secretaire with side-opening door can be found on a number of other commodes supplied by the firm including one commissioned by the 9th Earl of Exeter (d.1793) for Burghley House, Lincolnshire in 1767 (see O.Impey, Four Centuries of Decrative Arts from Burghley House, exhibition catalogue, Virginia, 1998, p.54, fig.26) and a pair for the 5th Earl of Coventry at Croome Court, Worcestershire in 1764 (see L.Wood, ibid, p.15, fig.12).
During the 1760s, such pictorial marquetry became a specialty of many fashionable London firms such as Chippendale and Linnell, however the overall form, decorative details and use of heavily shaded and engraved marquetry relate this secretaire most closely to the work produced by the Golden Square firm of Mayhew and Ince. Paired fantastical beasts with acanthus-scrolled tails, draped urns and ribbon-tied figural medallions also feature on a demilune commode attributed to Mayhew and Ince in the Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight which further relates to a larger group of furniture with documentary links to the firm. This distinctive group, as discussed by Lucy Wood in her Catalogue of Commodes (no.27, pp.226-235), includes several pieces at Syon House, Middlesex and Badminton House, Gloucestershire. The Badminton commission has been associated with large payments made to the firm by the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort between 1778 and 1798 and includes an oval-topped table with a similarly drawn medallion of classical figures (L.Wood, op.cit, figs.218-219) and a pair of corner cupboards with similar tablet whose outset lower corners are hung with oversized guttae (ibid, fig.220). Furthermore, there is a group of furniture at Saltram House, Devon that includes a cabinet-on-stand whose door panels are virtually identical to the side panels on this secretaire, as illustrated in G. Wills, English Furniture 1760-1900, New York, 1971, p.109, fig.87. Also at Saltram, which was refurbished under the direction of Robert Adam, is a similar wyvern-decorated pembroke table that undisputedly belongs to the same group (see G. Wills, op.cit, p.111, pl.14). Mayhew and Ince were known to have collaborated with Adam on a number of other commissions including Croome Court, Burghley and Derby House. The husk-chain embellished angles can be compared to furniture supplied to Sir Warren Hastings for Daylesford, Worcestershire including a writing table and secretaire (see L. Boynton, 'The Furniture of Warren Hastings', Burlington, August 1970, pp.510 and 513).
The box-like form of this secretaire with side-opening door can be found on a number of other commodes supplied by the firm including one commissioned by the 9th Earl of Exeter (d.1793) for Burghley House, Lincolnshire in 1767 (see O.Impey, Four Centuries of Decrative Arts from Burghley House, exhibition catalogue, Virginia, 1998, p.54, fig.26) and a pair for the 5th Earl of Coventry at Croome Court, Worcestershire in 1764 (see L.Wood, ibid, p.15, fig.12).