.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This satinwood writing-table is designed in the George IV antique fashion promoted by Richard Hicks Bridgens (1785-1846). Bridgens trained and worked with Messrs George Bullock (d. 1818) and William Bullock, proprietors of Piccadilly's 'Egyptian Hall', from 1812, collaborating on such projects as Sir Henry Godfrey Vassal Webster's historic 'Hastings' Hall at Battle Abbey, Sussex, whose furniture featured in Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 1817.
This table's distinctive turned inverted finials, pieced foliate end pedestals and gadrooned feet closely follow a design published in Furniture with Candelabra and Interior Decoration designed by R. Bridgens, London, 1838, pl. XVIII. This publication, which illustrated Bridgens' earlier designs for furniture in the Elizabethan, Gothic and Grecian styles, included sixteen plates of furniture Bridgens had designed for Aston Hall in the 1820's for James Watt. These examples of heavy oak furniture were specifically designed to compliment the Jacobean style of the house (V. Glenn, 'George Bullock, Richard Bridgens and James Watt's Regency Furniture Schemes', Furniture History, 1979, pp. 54-67). An example of a related table was sold anonymously, 9 March 2000, lot 168 for £20,700. This oak library table follows the pattern for a sofa table Bridgens invented to correspond with the 17th Century Jacobean mantelpiece in the Great Library at Aston Hall (Glenn, op. cit., pl. 102B, signed and dated by Richard Bridgens, 1823).
The publication of Bridgens' designs later influenced the Leamington cabinet-makers and upholsterers firm of Messrs Collier and Pluncknett, whose 1870s trade label announced their 'appointment to her Majesty Queen Victoria'.
This table's distinctive turned inverted finials, pieced foliate end pedestals and gadrooned feet closely follow a design published in Furniture with Candelabra and Interior Decoration designed by R. Bridgens, London, 1838, pl. XVIII. This publication, which illustrated Bridgens' earlier designs for furniture in the Elizabethan, Gothic and Grecian styles, included sixteen plates of furniture Bridgens had designed for Aston Hall in the 1820's for James Watt. These examples of heavy oak furniture were specifically designed to compliment the Jacobean style of the house (V. Glenn, 'George Bullock, Richard Bridgens and James Watt's Regency Furniture Schemes', Furniture History, 1979, pp. 54-67). An example of a related table was sold anonymously, 9 March 2000, lot 168 for £20,700. This oak library table follows the pattern for a sofa table Bridgens invented to correspond with the 17th Century Jacobean mantelpiece in the Great Library at Aston Hall (Glenn, op. cit., pl. 102B, signed and dated by Richard Bridgens, 1823).
The publication of Bridgens' designs later influenced the Leamington cabinet-makers and upholsterers firm of Messrs Collier and Pluncknett, whose 1870s trade label announced their 'appointment to her Majesty Queen Victoria'.