Lot Essay
The pair of marble-topped pier-tables, with their bubbled and water-dripped friezes supported on golden oak-trees, are designed in the French 'picturesque' style and are likely to have been commissioned by Marcus Beresford, 1st Earl of Tyrone (b.1694), circa 1750 for the 'New Apartment' at Curraghmore, County Waterford. These gnarled oaks, rooted in craggy earth, formed part of the rustic embellishments introduced to their medieval-towered home, while the Earl and his Countess Catherine were also introducing a shell-encrusted grotto and other whimsical pavilions to their ancient demesne, with its river, cascades, fountains and 'natural wilderness of tall venerable oak' spread beneath the Comeragh Mountains.
Their plinth-supports and serpentined oak frames of entwined bifurcating trunks and branches are conceived in the manner of 'marble table' patterns that were issued by Batty Langley in the The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740, and derived from the designs of the French sculptor Nicolas Pineau (d.1754). Forming part of pier-sets, these tables were accompanied by ribbon-hung pier-glasses with medallion frames, whose gnarled branches overlapped their watery glass surfaces. They harmonised both with Curraghmore's Arcadian landscape paintings executed by the Dutch artist Johann van der Hagen (d.1745); and also with the Roman architecture of the great room-of-entertainment, with its Corinthian columns and ceiling stuccoed by the Italians Paul and Philip Francini and depicting medallion bas-reliefs of ancient worthies, bird-inhabited Roman acanthus and the shell-badges of the Nature Goddess Venus tied to a triumphal wreath of oak, sacred to Jupiter (M. Girouard, 'Curraghmore, Co. Waterford - III', Country Life, 21 February 1963, p. 371, fig. 8). The Tyrones, who also had a house in Dublin, patronised its leading sculptors such as John van Nost (d.1780), who executed his bust in 1780. They also patronised the specialist carver John Houghton (d.1774), so there is a possibility that he was responsible for the carving of their table-frames (The Knight of Glin, Ireland, 'Fine Furniture before 1800', Macmillan Dictionary of Art, 1996, vol. 16, chapter VI, p. 26). They correspond to the fashion for Chinoiserie 'root' furniture, then considered appropriate both for garden and tea houses and drawing-rooms, such as the tea-table and stand for candelabra and china illustrated in Edwards and Darly, New Book of Chinese Designs, 1754, pls. 37 and 245; or the Chinese 'Frames' for marble slabs illustrated in Matthias Lock and Henry Copeland's New Book of Ornaments, 1752, pl. 2. The latter relates to a celebrated table commissioned at this period by Paul Methuen for Corsham Court, Wiltshire (M. Snodin, Rococo; Art and Design in Hogarth's England, London, 1994, p. 167, L. 19 and L. 20). It seems likely that the 'new roome' is the great room at Curraghmore which George Stone, Primate of Ireland, expressly asked to see on his visit there in October 1750. (M. Girouard, op. cit., p. 260).
Their plinth-supports and serpentined oak frames of entwined bifurcating trunks and branches are conceived in the manner of 'marble table' patterns that were issued by Batty Langley in the The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740, and derived from the designs of the French sculptor Nicolas Pineau (d.1754). Forming part of pier-sets, these tables were accompanied by ribbon-hung pier-glasses with medallion frames, whose gnarled branches overlapped their watery glass surfaces. They harmonised both with Curraghmore's Arcadian landscape paintings executed by the Dutch artist Johann van der Hagen (d.1745); and also with the Roman architecture of the great room-of-entertainment, with its Corinthian columns and ceiling stuccoed by the Italians Paul and Philip Francini and depicting medallion bas-reliefs of ancient worthies, bird-inhabited Roman acanthus and the shell-badges of the Nature Goddess Venus tied to a triumphal wreath of oak, sacred to Jupiter (M. Girouard, 'Curraghmore, Co. Waterford - III', Country Life, 21 February 1963, p. 371, fig. 8). The Tyrones, who also had a house in Dublin, patronised its leading sculptors such as John van Nost (d.1780), who executed his bust in 1780. They also patronised the specialist carver John Houghton (d.1774), so there is a possibility that he was responsible for the carving of their table-frames (The Knight of Glin, Ireland, 'Fine Furniture before 1800', Macmillan Dictionary of Art, 1996, vol. 16, chapter VI, p. 26). They correspond to the fashion for Chinoiserie 'root' furniture, then considered appropriate both for garden and tea houses and drawing-rooms, such as the tea-table and stand for candelabra and china illustrated in Edwards and Darly, New Book of Chinese Designs, 1754, pls. 37 and 245; or the Chinese 'Frames' for marble slabs illustrated in Matthias Lock and Henry Copeland's New Book of Ornaments, 1752, pl. 2. The latter relates to a celebrated table commissioned at this period by Paul Methuen for Corsham Court, Wiltshire (M. Snodin, Rococo; Art and Design in Hogarth's England, London, 1994, p. 167, L. 19 and L. 20). It seems likely that the 'new roome' is the great room at Curraghmore which George Stone, Primate of Ireland, expressly asked to see on his visit there in October 1750. (M. Girouard, op. cit., p. 260).