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Lot Essay
The twin-drawer fitted chest with its ribbon-framed tablets on the front and each end are inlaid with ebonised acanthus husks. It relates to two coffers-on-stand possibly supplied to Roger Wilbraham, Esq. (d. 1754) and sold by the Wilbraham Family of Cheshire, in these Rooms, 9 July 1998, lots 8 & 9 (£14,950 & £13,225 respectively).
This dressing-room chest is embellished in the George II French antique fashion as represented in a pattern for a Roman sarcophagus tea-chest in the 1740s trade-card of the Swallow Street cabinet-makers Thomas Landall and John Gordon (C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730 - 1760, London, 1993, fig. 12). Its façade displays a fine figured mahogany tablet, whose corners are flowered with ebonised buds of Roman foliage, while its trussed legs are similarly fretted with foliage that is flowered at the corners. A related 'neat mahogany tea chest ... ornamented with brass' was listed in the possession of the Hon. Colonel Mercer (d. 1739) (ibid., p. 21). A similar tea-chest, with flowered acanthus in the angles, is in the Victoria & Albert Museum. However it has been attributed to the craftsman J. Graveley, whose brand has been recorded on a brass-inlaid desk (C. Gilbert and T.Murdoch, 'Channon Revisited', Furniture History, 1994, p. 76, fig. 18; and C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1660-1840, p. 31).
This dressing-room chest is embellished in the George II French antique fashion as represented in a pattern for a Roman sarcophagus tea-chest in the 1740s trade-card of the Swallow Street cabinet-makers Thomas Landall and John Gordon (C. Gilbert and T. Murdoch, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730 - 1760, London, 1993, fig. 12). Its façade displays a fine figured mahogany tablet, whose corners are flowered with ebonised buds of Roman foliage, while its trussed legs are similarly fretted with foliage that is flowered at the corners. A related 'neat mahogany tea chest ... ornamented with brass' was listed in the possession of the Hon. Colonel Mercer (d. 1739) (ibid., p. 21). A similar tea-chest, with flowered acanthus in the angles, is in the Victoria & Albert Museum. However it has been attributed to the craftsman J. Graveley, whose brand has been recorded on a brass-inlaid desk (C. Gilbert and T.Murdoch, 'Channon Revisited', Furniture History, 1994, p. 76, fig. 18; and C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1660-1840, p. 31).