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Lot Essay
The marble-topped table, ormolu-enriched with 'Apollo' palms and beribboned laurels, is designed in the elegant French antique fashion promoted around 1800 by architects such as Henry Holland, Charles Heathcote Tatham, and Joseph Bonomi (d. 1808). The form of its paired and 'triumphal arched' legs relates to that of a 'Dressing Table' pattern in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, 1793; as well as to a dressing-table design executed in the 1790s by the architect J. Bonomi (J. Lever, Architect's designs for furniture, London, 1982, p. 49).
Such paired and hermed legs also derive from sideboard-tables such as that supplied in the 1770s by Messrs Chippendale for Paxton, Scotland (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, p. 193). Its palm-flowered bas-reliefs are inspired by Roman carving as featured on the marble antiquity, the 'Barberini Candelabrum', illustrated in Tatham's 'Ancient and Ornamental Architecture', 1799. Tatham, like other architects, had obtained casts of such sculpture to assist with his work.
His brother Thomas Tatham of the Mount Street firm of Marsh and Tatham was amongst the principal suppliers of furniture enriched with 'rich ormolu mounts'. The palm-flowered and lozenge reliefs, for instance, relate to those on bookcases that Thomas Tatham supplied in 1806 for the Carlton House palace of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV (H. Roberts, For the King's Pleasure, London, 2001, p. 333, fig. 414).
Such paired and hermed legs also derive from sideboard-tables such as that supplied in the 1770s by Messrs Chippendale for Paxton, Scotland (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, p. 193). Its palm-flowered bas-reliefs are inspired by Roman carving as featured on the marble antiquity, the 'Barberini Candelabrum', illustrated in Tatham's 'Ancient and Ornamental Architecture', 1799. Tatham, like other architects, had obtained casts of such sculpture to assist with his work.
His brother Thomas Tatham of the Mount Street firm of Marsh and Tatham was amongst the principal suppliers of furniture enriched with 'rich ormolu mounts'. The palm-flowered and lozenge reliefs, for instance, relate to those on bookcases that Thomas Tatham supplied in 1806 for the Carlton House palace of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV (H. Roberts, For the King's Pleasure, London, 2001, p. 333, fig. 414).