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Lot Essay
This hexagonal tea-table, conceived in the George III Roman fashion, has a segmental-parquetried top inlaid with a golden sunflower, while its pillar has a serpentined tripod 'claw', with volute-footed trusses enriched with trompe l'oeil Gothic-cusped flutes. In 1764, Thomas Chippendale (d.1779) supplied two tables of this form veneered in amber-colored 'Guadelupe' mahogany to Sir Lawrence Dundas, Bt., for his London mansion at 19 Arlington Street (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, pp. 156 and 159). A further three related tables exist at Harewood House, Yorkshire corresponding to a Chippendale design of circa 1772 (C. Gilbert, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 254, 256, figs. 464, 469), whilst the same Gothic-cusped flutes and panelled leg appear on a firescreen supplied in the mid-1770s for Newby Hall, Yorkshire (fig. 334).
The table's distinctive 'sunflower' or starburst motif - also employed by Chippendale on the celebrated bookcases delivered for Pembroke House, London and now at Wilton - serves as a poetic trophy to recall the ceiling of Apollo's temple, known through its illustration in Richard Wood's Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra, 1753.
This model enjoyed considerable popularity and Chippendale's St. Martin's Lane workshop appears to have executed several variants of the design. These include a table that sold anonymously at Christie's London, 11 November 1999, lot 30 (£84,000) and another similarly plain turned shaft sold anonymously at Christie's London, 6 July 2000, lot 65 (£67,550).
The table's distinctive 'sunflower' or starburst motif - also employed by Chippendale on the celebrated bookcases delivered for Pembroke House, London and now at Wilton - serves as a poetic trophy to recall the ceiling of Apollo's temple, known through its illustration in Richard Wood's Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra, 1753.
This model enjoyed considerable popularity and Chippendale's St. Martin's Lane workshop appears to have executed several variants of the design. These include a table that sold anonymously at Christie's London, 11 November 1999, lot 30 (£84,000) and another similarly plain turned shaft sold anonymously at Christie's London, 6 July 2000, lot 65 (£67,550).