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Lot Essay
This exotic cabinet, displaying an "arabesque" tablet in the manner of Jean Bérain (d.1711), Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet to Louis XIV, is designed in the George III 'antique' style of the 1770s, and embellished with golden brass mounts and filigreed inlay. The tortoiseshell-veneered tablet is inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, celebrating 'Love's Triumph', and is adapted from a 17th Century table top. Its acanthus-wrapped ribbon scrolls, inhabited by animals, birds and insects, enclose a baldaquin-draped and pedestal-supported vignette of basket-bearing Cupids attending Venus at her toilet. The stand's boulle-veneered frieze displays sphinx-guarded vases in the manner of those featured on the drawers of a Louis XIV bureau-plat in the Royal Collection (see G.F. Laking, The Furniture at Windsor Castle, London, 1905, pl. 28). Related ormolu feet appear on furniture of the 1760s attributed to John Linnell (d.1796) of Berkeley Square, including card tables supplied for Alnwick Castle, which have tops inlaid with a similar composition to this cabinet's door interiors, and a pair of pier-tables formerly in the possession of Messrs. Frank Partridge and Sons (see H. Hayward and P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, vol. II, figs. 279, 280 and 286).
The fashion for rich-inlaid furniture and Boulle had been promoted from the later 1750s by various Tottenham Court Road workshops, particularly that of Pierre Langlois (d.1765), who is credited with the manufacture of a set of four brass-inlaid commodes acquired by King George IV in 1818 (see P. Thornton and W. Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois, Ebéniste, Part 3', Connoisseur, March 1972, p. 185. Another specialist inlayer was the Paris-trained ébéniste Christopher Fuhrlohg (d. after 1787), who is thought to have worked for a time with William and John Linnell before moving to 24 Tottenham Court Road, where he was to advertise himself as "Ebéniste" to George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV. It was John Bradburn (fl1760-1781), however, who remade a pair of Boulle cabinets-on-stand in 1766 for Queen Charlotte and King George III's bedroom at Richmond Lodge (J. Roberts, 'George III & Queen Charlotte, Exhibition Catalogue, London, 2004, no.272, p.266-7).
Exotic cabinets, generally dressed with porcelain, formed an essential part of fashionable 18th century bedroom apartments. A related cabinet, incorporating a wood marquetry tablet attributed to André-Charles Boulle (d.1732), was formerly in the state apartment at Warwick Castle and was sold in these Rooms by the Trustees of the Warwick Castle Resettlement, 30 May 1968, lot 85, and is now in the Bowes Museum, Durham. The latter may have been amongst the furniture included in invoices totalling £180 made out between 1774 and 1777 to Messrs. Mayhew and Ince of Golden Square for furniture supplied to Warwick Castle (Payments listed in the legers of Hoare's Bank).
The fashion for rich-inlaid furniture and Boulle had been promoted from the later 1750s by various Tottenham Court Road workshops, particularly that of Pierre Langlois (d.1765), who is credited with the manufacture of a set of four brass-inlaid commodes acquired by King George IV in 1818 (see P. Thornton and W. Rieder, 'Pierre Langlois, Ebéniste, Part 3', Connoisseur, March 1972, p. 185. Another specialist inlayer was the Paris-trained ébéniste Christopher Fuhrlohg (d. after 1787), who is thought to have worked for a time with William and John Linnell before moving to 24 Tottenham Court Road, where he was to advertise himself as "Ebéniste" to George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV. It was John Bradburn (fl1760-1781), however, who remade a pair of Boulle cabinets-on-stand in 1766 for Queen Charlotte and King George III's bedroom at Richmond Lodge (J. Roberts, 'George III & Queen Charlotte, Exhibition Catalogue, London, 2004, no.272, p.266-7).
Exotic cabinets, generally dressed with porcelain, formed an essential part of fashionable 18th century bedroom apartments. A related cabinet, incorporating a wood marquetry tablet attributed to André-Charles Boulle (d.1732), was formerly in the state apartment at Warwick Castle and was sold in these Rooms by the Trustees of the Warwick Castle Resettlement, 30 May 1968, lot 85, and is now in the Bowes Museum, Durham. The latter may have been amongst the furniture included in invoices totalling £180 made out between 1774 and 1777 to Messrs. Mayhew and Ince of Golden Square for furniture supplied to Warwick Castle (Payments listed in the legers of Hoare's Bank).