CIRCA 1820

Details

A GEORGE IV BROWN OAK AND MARQUETRY WRITING-TABLE
CIRCA 1820
The rectangular brown leather-lined top with a border of inlaid oak branches above two mahogany-lined frieze drawers and opposing false drawers, on panelled end-supprorts and scrolled lion paw feet with inset brass castors, inscribed twice in chalk 'EB' and once 'DS', handles replaced
29¼ in. (74 cm.) high; 44½ in. (113 cm.) wide; 25 in. (64 cm.) deep

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Lot Essay

The George IV table, intended companion of a Grecian sofa and conceived in the British French antique fashion, has its oak top wreathed by festive marquetry-inlay of flowers tied in corner tablets by branches of Jupiter's sacred oak issuing from the centres; while golden Egyptian 'sunbursts' flower its frieze tablets. Related oaken furnishings, lauded in R. Ackermann's Repository of Arts, were commissioned in 1815 for Napoleon's St. Helena residence from the Tenterden Street cabinet-maker George Bullock (d.1818) by George IV, when Prince Regent. The basic pattern for the poetic Grecian plinth-supported pillars, which are raised on Apollonian palm-flowered griffin paws, appears in an 1823 sketch for a table commissioned by Sir H. D. Hamilton from Messrs Gillow & Co. The stamp 'Gillows. Lancaster', together with chalked numerals, features on a table with similar pilaster supports (sold Christie's London, 8 February 1996, lot 387, where the Gillow design is also illustrated).

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