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Lot Essay
The tripod table, conceived in the George IV antique manner, is supported on bacchic lion-feet and its octagon top, parquetry-mosaiced with 'Shakespeare's' mulberry wood, is inlaid with a ribbon-band inlaid in 'antique' ebony with the initials 'WSMT' presumably for 'William Shakespeare's mulberry tree' and is dated 1609. The pillar and the Grecian-scrolled claw of its altar plinth are Salomonic spiralled in the Elizabethan manner in honor of Shakespeare. The fame of William Shakespeare (d.1616) had become increasingly celebrated at Stratford- upon-Avon following the triumph of the actor David Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee Festival in 1769. At this period the fragments of a celebrated Stratford mulberry tree, planted by the Immortal Bard himself shortly before his death at New Place, also became increasingly prized for their association with the Elizabethan author. Although tragically felled in 1756, souvenir logs of the Shakespeare mulberry tree were acquired by the Town Corporation. This and other Stratford mulberry, transformed into souvenir items such as medallions, wig-stands, wassail cups, tea and writing boxes were considered to provide a touch that, like Ireland's Blarney stone, imparted the gift of words. Garrick built a Thames-side temple to display his Shakespeare memorial chair, incorporating a mulberry medallion of the Bard, and this is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. The tree was further sanctified by Garrick's popular ballad Shakespeare's Mulberry-Tree performed at the Jubilee to music composed by Charles Dibdin. The ballad includes the following verses:
As a relick I kiss it, and bow at the shrine,
What comes from thy hand must be ever divine!
All shall yield to the Mulberry-tree,
Bend to thee,
Blest Mulberry,
Matchless was he,
Who planted thee,
And thou like him immortal be!...
...Then each take a relick of this hallow'd tree,
From folly and fashion a charm let it be;
Fill fill to the planter, the cup to the brim,
To honour the country, do honour to him,
All shall yield to the Mulberry-tree,
etc., etc...
(J.M. Stockholm, Garrick's Folly, London, 1964)
As a relick I kiss it, and bow at the shrine,
What comes from thy hand must be ever divine!
All shall yield to the Mulberry-tree,
Bend to thee,
Blest Mulberry,
Matchless was he,
Who planted thee,
And thou like him immortal be!...
...Then each take a relick of this hallow'd tree,
From folly and fashion a charm let it be;
Fill fill to the planter, the cup to the brim,
To honour the country, do honour to him,
All shall yield to the Mulberry-tree,
etc., etc...
(J.M. Stockholm, Garrick's Folly, London, 1964)