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Lot Essay
The commode top is veneered in golden satinwood with a scalloped compartment that is rayed from an elliptic Palmyreen sunflowered medallion, and wreathed with flowers in a ribboned border of amaranth. Beribboned laurels in the French 'baguette' manner festoon the frieze, while the façade displays triumphal Grecian laurel wreaths in tablets that have French-fashioned hollow corners enriched with flowered medallion patterae. Its plinth-supported stump feet are also reeded in the manner of Grecian palm-flowers. Its elegant classical ornament typifies the St. Martin's Lane style of the early 1770s adopted by the firm of Thomas Chippendale Senior (d. 1779) at the time that his son Thomas Chippendale Junior (d. 1822) was playing an increasing role in its furniture design.
The laurels and palm-flowered legs feature on the salon seat-furniture supplied by the firm in the early 1770s for Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire; while the top relates to their pier-tables and a commode supplied later in the 1770s for Denton Hall, Yorkshire (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, figs. 364, 500 and 230). The laurel festoons and whorled-flower medallions also appear on their satinwood secretaire supplied in the early 1770s for Harewood House, Yorkshire. It also shares a number of features with the harewood commodes that were supplied in 1774 for William Constable's London house in Mansfield Street and invoiced as: -'2 Very neat commodes for the Piers of Air wood, very neatly Inlaid with various other fine woods, with folding doors and drawers within Cross banded & c...£58 (One sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 26 October 1985, lot 152, ibid., vol. I, pp. 279-280). Its ornament, celebrating the poetic triumph of the sun-deity Apollo, can be attributed to Thomas Chippendale Junior. This can be confirmed by comparing its frieze with his design for a laurel-festooned frieze that survives in the Constable family archives. While its laurel wreaths and whorled flowers feature in his pattern-book, entitled Sketches of Ornament, 1779 (ibid., vol. II, figs. 26 and 29).
The laurels and palm-flowered legs feature on the salon seat-furniture supplied by the firm in the early 1770s for Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire; while the top relates to their pier-tables and a commode supplied later in the 1770s for Denton Hall, Yorkshire (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, figs. 364, 500 and 230). The laurel festoons and whorled-flower medallions also appear on their satinwood secretaire supplied in the early 1770s for Harewood House, Yorkshire. It also shares a number of features with the harewood commodes that were supplied in 1774 for William Constable's London house in Mansfield Street and invoiced as: -'2 Very neat commodes for the Piers of Air wood, very neatly Inlaid with various other fine woods, with folding doors and drawers within Cross banded & c...£58 (One sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 26 October 1985, lot 152, ibid., vol. I, pp. 279-280). Its ornament, celebrating the poetic triumph of the sun-deity Apollo, can be attributed to Thomas Chippendale Junior. This can be confirmed by comparing its frieze with his design for a laurel-festooned frieze that survives in the Constable family archives. While its laurel wreaths and whorled flowers feature in his pattern-book, entitled Sketches of Ornament, 1779 (ibid., vol. II, figs. 26 and 29).