BY MOREL AND SEDDON, CIRCA 1828

When George III adopted Windsor as a principal residence in 1776 he found it to be an inhospitable and impractical dwelling and so embarked on a long process of alteration and improvement including its transformation, under the direction of James Wyatt, into a Gothic palace. The then Prince of Wales first occupied an apartment at Windsor in 1781 but his interests in architecture and interior decoration were soon consumed by Carlton House and then the Marine Pavilion at Brighton. In 1820 when the Prince succeeded his father, by then with a highly developed taste for luxury and comfort, he found that Windsor still left much to be desired and it was some time before he set about the business of decorating and furnishing the palace to his taste. In this he came under the considerable influence of Sir Charles Long who had previously been employed at Carlton House. Thereafter the King and Long were instrumental in creating, over time and at great expense, the sumptuous interiors now so familiar (H.Roberts, For The King’s Pleasure The Furnishings and Decoration of George IV’s Apartments at Windsor Castle, London, 2001, pp. 3 – 23).

New furnishings for Windsor were already being acquired, under Long’s direction, from 1824, including tapestries and French furniture and in July 1826 the decision was made to appoint Nicholas Morel to furnish the King’s apartments. Morel had been a supplier of furniture to George IV since the 1790s and after 1804 in partnership with Robert Hughes. In 1821 Morel and Hughes won the commission to refurnish the south wing of Northumberland House, including `richly carved and gilded seat furniture with elaborate upholstery’ and `curtains of lavish design’, a style that would naturally have appealed to the King. However it was Morel alone who was appointed to Windsor (Roberts, ibid., pp. 25 – 28). In order to be able to fulfil the commission he would need a partner with sufficient resources and in 1827 he settled upon an arrangement with George Seddon whose great grandfather had established a furniture-making business in 1753. Morel likely took the major artistic decisions while Seddon offered (probably) the largest workshops in London with experienced draughtsmen, managers and skilled workers (C.Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660 – 1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 624 and pp. 793–798).

The goods supplied by Morel & Seddon reflected the King’s taste and the current fashion for French and Gothic styles, and they enlisted many collaborators from design to manufacture including, J.J.Boileau, F.H.G.Jacob-Desmalter both Pugins Snr and Jnr and W.& G.Perry. The King wished for those parts of Windsor that retained a mediaeval character to be furnished in corresponding style, elsewhere a more obviously French Empire/Regency style prevailed, employing a variety of highly polished and richly mounted or inlaid, exotic timbers, everywhere there was luxurious upholstery and vivid silks.

The dressing-table, which demonstrates this French style, was almost certainly intended for room 244, a bedroom within a suite of rooms in the Lancaster Tower on Windsor’s south side. Indeed the furniture listed in the room includes a `Parisian’ bed. Morel and Seddon supplied all the furnishings for this suite, the Windsor accounts record furniture in room 244 including an extensive suite of mahogany and gilt furniture including another large kneehole dressing-table supported by pedestals, a cabinet wash hand stand with Davenport china basin and ewer, bedstead, table, 2 pedestals, wardrobe, a towel horse and another wash hand stand with Brocatelli marble top. The dressing-table was described in detail thus: `To a dressing table of fine mahogany polished, the frieze containing a drawer, and supported by double scroll truss standards in front & pilasters at back, resting on a curved plinth with improved castors, the top finished with a small case with two drawers, the back panelled and containing a large toilette glass framed to rise and fitted with brass jointed folding supports, the whole panelled and enriched with carved foliage mouldings, rosettes etc, and surmounted by a richly carved dble scroll & fan ornament with foliage rosettes etc, gilt in the best manner in matt and burnished gold’. (Roberts, ibid., pp. 365 – 370 and pp. 350 – 351). It corresponds closely to another dressing-table in the accounts (no 626) though the latter has slightly richer `honeysuckle’ decoration on the front supports, it is now in the collection of the Hessiches Landesmuseum, Kassel. (Roberts, ibid., p. 284, figs. 358 & 359).

The later labels on the dressing-table indicate that it must have moved from the Lancaster Tower, a photograph in the Royal Collection from 1895 – 1900 shows the room as The Lady’s Dressing-Room, part of what was then known at the Tapestry Suite. The 1869 inventory label indicates the table was at that time in a room in the Winchester Tower, at the western end of Windsor’s North Terrace, and on another occasion it was also inventoried in room 259, an octagonal bedroom in Edward III’s Tower (close to room 244 and which originally contained its own mahogany washstand, no 1346) (Roberts, ibid., p. 387).