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Lot Essay
This sideboard table is almost certainly one of those that once graced the great series of rooms at Headfort House, Co. Meath, designed circa 1771 by Robert Adam. The austere-fronted house was built in the preceding decade, between 1761 and 1771, for the 1st Earl of Bective to designs by George Semple. Bective was one of only three Irish patrons to employ Adam; the others being Hercules Rowley and the 1st Lord Templetown.
The table's marble top, framed by a Grecian ribbon-fret and with indented corners, copies the George II marble top that sat on one of the other tables from the set (offered by Headfort School, Christie's, London, 14 November 1996, lot 47 and now in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin). The marble top is displayed on a Regency 'Adam' frame, its arabesque frieze of Grecian palm-flowers, emerging from flowered and husk-festooned Roman acanthus, which derives from a sideboard-table pattern issued in The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, vol. III, London, 1822 (pl. XI). Similar ornament also appears on a table frame designed in 1765 for the dining-room at Syon House, Middlesex, by Robert Adam (C. Musgrave, Adam and Hepplewhite and Other Neo-Classical Furniture, London, 1966, fig. 15). The Headfort tables may have been executed by the Dublin firm of James Del Vecchio, carvers, gilders, looking-glass sellers and composition ornament manufacturers (The Knight of Glin and J. Peill, Irish Furniture, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 292).
It can be established from Country Life photographs that there were certainly three identical side tables at Headfort, and it is possible that there were others.
The table's marble top, framed by a Grecian ribbon-fret and with indented corners, copies the George II marble top that sat on one of the other tables from the set (offered by Headfort School, Christie's, London, 14 November 1996, lot 47 and now in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin). The marble top is displayed on a Regency 'Adam' frame, its arabesque frieze of Grecian palm-flowers, emerging from flowered and husk-festooned Roman acanthus, which derives from a sideboard-table pattern issued in The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, vol. III, London, 1822 (pl. XI). Similar ornament also appears on a table frame designed in 1765 for the dining-room at Syon House, Middlesex, by Robert Adam (C. Musgrave, Adam and Hepplewhite and Other Neo-Classical Furniture, London, 1966, fig. 15). The Headfort tables may have been executed by the Dublin firm of James Del Vecchio, carvers, gilders, looking-glass sellers and composition ornament manufacturers (The Knight of Glin and J. Peill, Irish Furniture, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 292).
It can be established from Country Life photographs that there were certainly three identical side tables at Headfort, and it is possible that there were others.