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拍品專文
The present tables were part of a suite of furniture commissioned for the opening of Liberty & Company's flagship store on Great Malborough street in 1924. The magnificent Tudor front was constructed from the timbers of two ships - the HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan and designed by Edwin T. Hall and his son Edwin S. Hall. The design was intended to give shoppers a sense of being in their own homes with narrow walkways and halls and smaller rooms giving customers an intimate environment in which to view exotic rugs, Eastern treasures and the latest in high fashion.
The present tables were designed as viewing or display tables - most likely for gloves, scarves or trinkets. Lorimer's design for this type of table is commonly attributed to around 1905-10 and no established link is documented between Lorimer and Liberty. It is possible however that the present tables were supplied by either Whytock & Reid or Scott Morton without any direct involvment from Lorimer himself.
Sir Robert Lorimer, although better known as the Architect of the Thistle Chapel in St Giles, the High Kirk of Edinburgh and The National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle, as well as the sympathetic restorer or builder of many castles and mansions, principally in Scotland, is recognised and celebrated as a leading designer of Scottish vernacular furniture. His approach to furniture was that of a traditionalist, far removed from the furniture conceived and designed in Glasgow by his near contemporary Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In the first place Lorimer believed in employing the finest timber that was available, for 'wood should tell its own tale.' It is no coincidence that he was profoundly influenced by the natural world around him, in particular woodlands. In the second place he adopted the tenets of William Morris and The Arts and Crafts Movement, in so far as he felt passionately that furniture should be made in the established and orthodox manner, as it had been in the 18th century and earlier, before so much of it had been debased and devalued by the mechanical advances of the Industrial Revolution. He built up a close working relationship over a few decades with the craftsmen of the fashionable Edinburgh Cabinet-Makers, Whytock and Reid, often sketching out his designs on the back of an envelope and trusting them to interpret and work up the pieces to the exacting standards of design and craftsmanship that he demanded and received: nothing made of inferior wood, of dismal proportion, or ill-crafted was acceptable. In the third place his pursuit of good design led him to draw inspiration for his furniture from diverse sources including Queen Anne, Louis Quinze and 18th century Scottish and Dutch. It was the aspiration of the architect 'to take a fine old model and do your own comments on it, and then you have a sound sweet smelling thing fit to last for a few hundred years.' In 1878 Professor James Lorimer, father of Robert, the distinguished professor of International Law at Edinburgh University and a man of formidable and exacting intellect had taken Kellie Castle in the East Neuk of Fife on a thirty-eight year lease. The impact of growing up in such a fine and untouched old early 17th century castle with mediaeval origins and superb plaster ceilings was profound on the thirteen year old boy: with such a backround, it is not altogether surprising that Lorimer regarded the pursuit of original design, novelty for novelty's sake as irrelevant.
Lorimer, was above all a Gothicist and this pair of circular centre tables relates to a table made for 54 Melville Street (the Edinburgh home he acquired in 1902) and now in the collection of the National Trust for Scotland at Kellie Castle. The 'slow-turned' gothic leg is surely the leitmotif of all the gothic furniture designed by Lorimer and the fascination that it exercised upon him is attested by the many subtle variations that exist. His sketchbooks, loaned to the RIAS in Edinburgh, contain similar German 15th and 16th century tables that he sketched whilst on the Continent. In the summer of 1900 he had visited Munich, Rothenburg and Nuremberg (with William Burrell, the celebrated ship-owner and collector and at that time close friend) and had written to his great friend, the Australian Architect R.S.Dods, with whom he had studied in the office of G.F.Bodley, 'I'm, if possible, more of a Gothic man after this trip than ever, for Gothic Rooms and Gothic things have the look of the useful thing delightfully fashioned.' The present lot exemplifies the distinctive restraint, particular charm and practicality of the furniture that Lorimer's fecund and discerning imagination breathed into life.
A similar table is illustrated in J. Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, Thames and Hudson, 1987, p. 228, pl. 612.
The present tables were designed as viewing or display tables - most likely for gloves, scarves or trinkets. Lorimer's design for this type of table is commonly attributed to around 1905-10 and no established link is documented between Lorimer and Liberty. It is possible however that the present tables were supplied by either Whytock & Reid or Scott Morton without any direct involvment from Lorimer himself.
Sir Robert Lorimer, although better known as the Architect of the Thistle Chapel in St Giles, the High Kirk of Edinburgh and The National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle, as well as the sympathetic restorer or builder of many castles and mansions, principally in Scotland, is recognised and celebrated as a leading designer of Scottish vernacular furniture. His approach to furniture was that of a traditionalist, far removed from the furniture conceived and designed in Glasgow by his near contemporary Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In the first place Lorimer believed in employing the finest timber that was available, for 'wood should tell its own tale.' It is no coincidence that he was profoundly influenced by the natural world around him, in particular woodlands. In the second place he adopted the tenets of William Morris and The Arts and Crafts Movement, in so far as he felt passionately that furniture should be made in the established and orthodox manner, as it had been in the 18th century and earlier, before so much of it had been debased and devalued by the mechanical advances of the Industrial Revolution. He built up a close working relationship over a few decades with the craftsmen of the fashionable Edinburgh Cabinet-Makers, Whytock and Reid, often sketching out his designs on the back of an envelope and trusting them to interpret and work up the pieces to the exacting standards of design and craftsmanship that he demanded and received: nothing made of inferior wood, of dismal proportion, or ill-crafted was acceptable. In the third place his pursuit of good design led him to draw inspiration for his furniture from diverse sources including Queen Anne, Louis Quinze and 18th century Scottish and Dutch. It was the aspiration of the architect 'to take a fine old model and do your own comments on it, and then you have a sound sweet smelling thing fit to last for a few hundred years.' In 1878 Professor James Lorimer, father of Robert, the distinguished professor of International Law at Edinburgh University and a man of formidable and exacting intellect had taken Kellie Castle in the East Neuk of Fife on a thirty-eight year lease. The impact of growing up in such a fine and untouched old early 17th century castle with mediaeval origins and superb plaster ceilings was profound on the thirteen year old boy: with such a backround, it is not altogether surprising that Lorimer regarded the pursuit of original design, novelty for novelty's sake as irrelevant.
Lorimer, was above all a Gothicist and this pair of circular centre tables relates to a table made for 54 Melville Street (the Edinburgh home he acquired in 1902) and now in the collection of the National Trust for Scotland at Kellie Castle. The 'slow-turned' gothic leg is surely the leitmotif of all the gothic furniture designed by Lorimer and the fascination that it exercised upon him is attested by the many subtle variations that exist. His sketchbooks, loaned to the RIAS in Edinburgh, contain similar German 15th and 16th century tables that he sketched whilst on the Continent. In the summer of 1900 he had visited Munich, Rothenburg and Nuremberg (with William Burrell, the celebrated ship-owner and collector and at that time close friend) and had written to his great friend, the Australian Architect R.S.Dods, with whom he had studied in the office of G.F.Bodley, 'I'm, if possible, more of a Gothic man after this trip than ever, for Gothic Rooms and Gothic things have the look of the useful thing delightfully fashioned.' The present lot exemplifies the distinctive restraint, particular charm and practicality of the furniture that Lorimer's fecund and discerning imagination breathed into life.
A similar table is illustrated in J. Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, Thames and Hudson, 1987, p. 228, pl. 612.