ATTRIBUTED TO CRACE & CO, BASED ON THE DESIGNS OF A.W.N. PUGIN, CIRCA 1850-60

This table forms part of an important group of Gothic Revival octagonal marquetry tables that illustrate and result from the successful collaboration from c. 1842-52 between the designer Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52), ‘perhaps the greatest of all architect-designers of the Gothic Revival’, and the decorating/furniture-making firm of John Gregory Crace (1809-89) of 14 Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, London (Aldrich, 2001, op. cit., p. 48). Pugin was the maverick designer, well-versed in the medieval idiom, while the Crace firm, established in 1768, were decorators to the Royal family, most notably at Brighton Pavilion where Frederick Crace was the Prince Regent’s decorator, and supplied the skilled craftsmen and decorative artists. Almost all of Crace’s furniture in the Gothic Revival style was produced exclusively from Pugin’s designs, and as these were done at speed and with little detail, it was Crace, who interpreted and developed the designs (Wedgwood, 1990, op. cit., p. 138). In the Pugin/Crace partnership, Gothic furniture was to be fundamental to the business. During the 1840s and 50s, Gothic furniture including octagonal tables, some with marquetry, such as the one offered here, became the firm’s leading manufacture at their London premises; generally produced in oak and walnut, this table is highly unusual being made with satinwood as the ground timber.

One of the first joint commissions was for Pugin’s own house, The Grange, at Ramsgate, Kent, which the designer saw as a preliminary ‘show house’ for prospective clients (Aldrich, 2001, op. cit., p. 49). However, the most important by far was the interior decoration of the Houses of Parliament, undertaken in conjunction with Charles Barry, from 1844-45. Thereafter, Pugin and Crace worked for a number of aristocratic patrons, including: Colonel Middleton Biddulph at Chirk Castle, Clywd (1846-47); Earl Somers at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire (1849-50), and the 6th Duke of Devonshire at Lismore, Co. Waterford. Gothic Revival was rejuvenated further still at the 1851 Great Exhibition, London, in the Medieval Court, a dedicated exhibition space given to Pugin.

In his early career, Pugin included designs for Gothic octagonal tables in his published works: on the title page of Pugin’s Gothic Furniture, published by Rudolph Ackermann in 1827, and in his Gothic Furniture in the Style of the Fifteenth Century (1835).
A number of designs by Pugin for tables, held in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, are comparable to this table. A design for an unidentified commission shows a related circular table with marquetry top and carved tripod legs (E.1621-1912), and although the framing to the underside of that table is triangular, as opposed to the square form used to the underside here, the drawing clearly shows the highly unusual x-form bracing hidden from view by the frieze common to both tables, a structural nuance further supporting the already firm attribution to Crace. Another design, albeit rectilinear, for an altar table, c. 1848, designed by Pugin and possibly executed by Crace for the Church of St. Andrew, Wells Street, Marylebone, has very similar shaped imbricated supports (D.1066-1908). The altar table is extant, but was moved to Kingsbury, Middlesex, when the church was rebuilt there in 1933-4. The design of the present table appears to hark back to the Regency Gothic style and recalls a sofa designed by James Wyatt (1746-1813) now in the Art Institute Chicago (1972.1132), which Jeremy Cooper in his Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors erroneously attributed to Pugin (Cooper, op. cit., p. 91, fig. 90). The unusual painted and parcel-gilt base of the present table also relates to a pair of similarly decorated tables in the State Drawing Room at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, supplied by Crace as part of a decorative and furniture scheme for Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1844 – although this commission was seemingly prior to Crace’s collaboration with Pugin (Musson, op. cit., pp. 104-107, fig. 8).

The polychromatic marquetry design of the hexagonal table-top is illustrative of Pugin’s development of more elaborate marquetry designs from c. 1849-51. It features the bold combination of white holly set in strong contrast with dark ground timber found on an oak octagonal table with a marquetry top, now in the Portsmouth City Museum, which can be dated to c. 1849, based on several unidentified designs for tables by Pugin that were sent to Crace (Wedgwood, 1985, op. cit., p. 262, cat nos. 779-81). However, in addition, and this suggests a slightly later date, this has the characteristic green-stained sycamore found on the octagonal walnut table by Pugin and Crace shown in the Medieval Court of the 1851 Exhibition and now at Lincoln’s Inn, London (Aldrich, 2001, op. cit., pp. 53-54, figs. 7-9). Pugin commented in correspondence with Crace that 'this sort of inlay furniture takes as long as a church. Moreover I am not quite at home in these woods. . ,'. Pugin's bold polychromatic watercolour design for the border, which is held in the collection of The Victoria & Albert Museum, (illustrated) is signed and dated 1850, a time that Aldrich (Op. cit.) records that Pugin 'devoted a number of designs to working out the form, materials and ornamentation of the table for the Medieval Court, and states that on that occasion Crace followed the unusually detailed designs much more closely, suggesting the importance that both designer and maker placed on the success of this important table as a manifestation of the very best that the partnership could produce. This mode of decoration is also found to the top of a walnut and oak octagonal table made for the Drawing Room at Abney Hall, Cheshire (illustrated), which was supplied in April 1853 (ibid., pp. 54-55, figs. 10-11; Victoria & Albert Museum, CIRC.334-1958), and on another octagonal walnut table made for Leighton Hall, Welshpool, by Crace using the designs of Pugin posthumously (ibid., p. 55, fig. 12). The marquetry of this table-top can be compared to the marquetry tables made for the Gothic Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire, in 1849-50 (Wainwright, op. cit., pp. 92-93, figs. 6-9), and to ‘The Lady’s Work Table’, also at Eastnor, made in 1850 for Lady Wegg Prosser, the daughter of the 2nd Earl Somers, to give as a wedding present to Virginia Prattle when she married Lady Wegg Prosser’s brother, Charles Somers Cocks, thereafter the 3rd Earl Somers. Pugin’s designs for the tables at Eastnor survive, and are in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Lady’s work table is also discussed in Pugin’s letters to Crace (Wainwright, op. cit., p. 92, fig. 4).

Whilst the designs for this table and the identity of the commission for which it was produced remain elusive, it is worthy of its place amongst the small group of important octagonal tables produced by J.G. Crace based on the designs of A.W.N. Pugin described in this catalogue note, which were made during the 1850s, both during and immediately after Pugin's lifetime. It is apparently unique amongst its illustrious counterparts, both in terms of its diminutive proportions and the highly unusual use of satinwood as well as the painted and parcel-gilt decoration to the base. It was deservedly considered as a prized possession in the Rose-Gallichan collection and that it has been preserved in such a good state is no doubt in part thanks to the care and attention of its most recent custodians.

We are grateful to Dr Megan Aldrich and Sharon Goodman for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.