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Lot Essay
This elliptic commode is designed and embellished with tablets and medallions in the elegant George III Etruscan/Roman fashion promoted in the 1770s by the publication of Robert and James Adam's Works in Architecture, 1773. Conceived as a pier-table-commode and likely to have accompanied a mirror in a bedroom-apartment window-pier, its ornament appropriately evokes lyric poetry and sacrifices at love's altar. The golden satinwood top, bordered by a flowered ribbon-guilloche, displays an 'Apollo' sunflowered patera within a 'Venus' shell-scalloped medallion. Sunflowered patera decorate the frieze above the herm-tapered legs. The façade tablets of the doors and angles also display sunflowered-medallions. The central one incorporating a fertility mask, chained by love's rings, and the side one displaying urns, appropriate to the contemporary vase-decked dressing-rooms discussed in the Adams, Works and decorated in the Roman-columbarium fashion.
The extremely sparing decoration on this commode is largely of very distinctive types, allowing it to be placed within a specific sub-group of the commodes attributed to the cabinet-making partnership of John Mayhew and William Ince, particularly as discussed by Lucy Wood in Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, pp. 226-235.
The key connection is a commode at Badminton associated with large payments made to the firm by the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort (ibid., p. 231) between 1778 and 1798. This goup includes a commode of exactly the same constructional form as the present lot (ibid., figs. 221-222) with voids at the sides behind the curved side panels. This feature is also shared by a plainer but closely related commode, also by Mayhew and Ince, supplied to Warren Hastings for Daylesford (L. Boynton, 'The Furniture of Warren Hastings', Burlington Magazine, August 1970, p. 512, fig. 30).
THE DRAPED URN: Prominent in the now mellowed satinwood ground of this commode is the Etruscan-black frieze tablet displaying a sacred veil-draped and Grecian-fretted urn. This extremely distinctive motif appears on a roll-top desk at Syon House, which has been associated with a sparsely documented commission from the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland in the early 1770s (C. Cator and H. Roberts in The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, p. 595 and the desk itself illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1954, vol. III, p. 258, fig. 42).
THE SATYR HEADS: A prominent element of the design of the front is the Mannerist central satyr head with chained collar, recorded by Lucy Wood (op. cit., p. 232) on a wine-cooler at Stourhead (R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, op. cit., vol. III, p. 373, fig. 6) and a commode sold from Lever's collection in New York in 1926 and subsequently resold at Sotheby's London, 1 May 1987, lot 89.
Other elements of the marquetry of the latter commode support an attribution to Mayhew and Ince. It also appears in the same position on a pair of commodes that also once belonged to Lever that are offered in these Rooms, 10 April 2003, lot 76 (result not known at the time of going to press)
The commode of Lever's sold in New York in 1926 referred to above shares additonal features with the present commode. The side panels have the same swagged urns and borders. It is illustrated in Wood, op. cit., p. 235, fig. 227).
The extremely sparing decoration on this commode is largely of very distinctive types, allowing it to be placed within a specific sub-group of the commodes attributed to the cabinet-making partnership of John Mayhew and William Ince, particularly as discussed by Lucy Wood in Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, pp. 226-235.
The key connection is a commode at Badminton associated with large payments made to the firm by the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort (ibid., p. 231) between 1778 and 1798. This goup includes a commode of exactly the same constructional form as the present lot (ibid., figs. 221-222) with voids at the sides behind the curved side panels. This feature is also shared by a plainer but closely related commode, also by Mayhew and Ince, supplied to Warren Hastings for Daylesford (L. Boynton, 'The Furniture of Warren Hastings', Burlington Magazine, August 1970, p. 512, fig. 30).
THE DRAPED URN: Prominent in the now mellowed satinwood ground of this commode is the Etruscan-black frieze tablet displaying a sacred veil-draped and Grecian-fretted urn. This extremely distinctive motif appears on a roll-top desk at Syon House, which has been associated with a sparsely documented commission from the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland in the early 1770s (C. Cator and H. Roberts in The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, p. 595 and the desk itself illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1954, vol. III, p. 258, fig. 42).
THE SATYR HEADS: A prominent element of the design of the front is the Mannerist central satyr head with chained collar, recorded by Lucy Wood (op. cit., p. 232) on a wine-cooler at Stourhead (R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, op. cit., vol. III, p. 373, fig. 6) and a commode sold from Lever's collection in New York in 1926 and subsequently resold at Sotheby's London, 1 May 1987, lot 89.
Other elements of the marquetry of the latter commode support an attribution to Mayhew and Ince. It also appears in the same position on a pair of commodes that also once belonged to Lever that are offered in these Rooms, 10 April 2003, lot 76 (result not known at the time of going to press)
The commode of Lever's sold in New York in 1926 referred to above shares additonal features with the present commode. The side panels have the same swagged urns and borders. It is illustrated in Wood, op. cit., p. 235, fig. 227).