Lot Essay
These elliptic window-pier tables, with elegant herm-tapered legs and flowered and foliated inlay, reflect the George III French/antique fashion popularised by T. Malton's Compleat Treatise on Perspective, 1778 (pl. 36). Evoking lyric poetry, appropriate for rooms-of-entertainment, their frieze tablets display laurelled trophies with Venus rose-flowered medallions, and these are flanked by Apollonian sunflowered medallions.
Lord Tweedmouth was a notable collector of English furniture in the 1870s and 1880s. Although his taste may have been influenced by Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, who introduced the 'Adams' or neoclassical fashion at houses such as Guisachan from the 1860s (E. Harris, 'Wright and Mansfield at Haddo, Guisachan, Brook House and Grosvenor Square, Furniture History, 1996, pp.141-158, it may also have been inherited from Edward Marjoribanks (d.1816) (C. Streeter, 'Marquetry Tables from Cobb's workshop', Furniture History, 1974, pp. 52, 53).
Lord Tweedmouth was a notable collector of English furniture in the 1870s and 1880s. Although his taste may have been influenced by Messrs. Wright and Mansfield, who introduced the 'Adams' or neoclassical fashion at houses such as Guisachan from the 1860s (E. Harris, 'Wright and Mansfield at Haddo, Guisachan, Brook House and Grosvenor Square, Furniture History, 1996, pp.141-158, it may also have been inherited from Edward Marjoribanks (d.1816) (C. Streeter, 'Marquetry Tables from Cobb's workshop', Furniture History, 1974, pp. 52, 53).