A GEORGE II MAHOGANY SECRETAIRE-CABINET

POSSIBLY NORTH COUNTRY, CIRCA 1750

細節

A GEORGE II MAHOGANY SECRETAIRE-CABINET
Possibly North Country, circa 1750
The molded overhanging broken cornice centered by a molded arch with keystone above a blind arcade upon four engaged fluted Doric pilasters to the pair of further doors, enclosing a range of shelves, the hipped lower section with molded edge over a fall-front drawer fronted with simulated two short over a long drawer, enclosing a central small hinged door carved with a shell clasp flanked to either side with a secret document drawer over four pigeonholes and a long over two short drawers behind a red leather writing inset, above three further graduated drawers flanked by fluted quarter columns, on ogee bracket feet, each drawer front with cockbeaded molded surround and replaced 18th century brass bail pulls, inscribed in white chalk DO 981 and in red ink HA 77
88¼in. (224cm.) high, 44½in. (113cm.) wide, 22¾in. (58cm.) deep

來源

Lady Digby-Vane, Lyddon House, Westminster, London.
With Didier Aaron, New York.

拍品專文

The triumphal-arched cabinet is designed in the George II antique or Roman fashion promoted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (d.1742); and its handsome Tuscan architecture derives from a Venetian window pattern in B.Langleys, The City and Country Builders and Workmans Treasury of Designs, London, 1740, 2nd ed. 1745, (pl. L1). Its paired pilasters are antique fluted, as are those sunk in the angles of its chest-of-drawers, and those flanking the bureaus tabernacle compartment. The shell, the badge of the nature deity Venus, crowns the hollowed niche of the latters commode door; while shell-scallops enrich the bureaus pigeonhole cornices, and the chests serpentined truss feet.

The architecture of its triumphal cabinet relates to that of a George II bureau-cabinet, bearing the label of the fashionable London cabinet-maker Giles Grendey (d.1780), sold Christies London, 8 July 1999, lot 140; while that of the chest-of-drawers relates to a bureau-dressing table dated 1751 and bearing the signature of the Lancaster cabinet-maker David Wright (d.1766) (see J.F. Hayward English Desks and Bureaux in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1968 fig 22).