Lot Essay
The tea-table's compass-cut or scalloped tray-top is inlaid with engraved brass and pearl in the 1730s arabesque manner. The scalloped and husk-festooned armorial escutcheon is displayed within a hollow cinquefoil compartment, whose cusped frame provides a circle of ten dishes or wells and is inlaid with pearls and Venus's shell badges. These are accompanied by a squirrel with a fruit-basket, emblematic of Plenty, that is triumphantly displayed on a lambrequined plinth. Both derive from an engraving, celebrating the Triumph of Cupid, published by Jean Bérain (d. 1711), Louis XIV's 'Dessinateur de la Chambre' (see: T.S. Strange, French Interiors, London, 1950, p. 100). A ribbon-twist guilloche wreaths the table's baluster-shaped pillar, whose tripod claw's voluted and serpentined feet are inlaid like the top in 'cut in filigree-work' with the nature goddess's shells displayed beneath flowered and husk-festooned lambrequins.
While the table-top conforms to early 18th Century Delft trays, the pillar, claw and decoration correspond to furniture illustrated on a 1730s trade-card thought to have been issued by Thomas Potter, cabinet-maker of High Holborn (C. Gilbert, op. cit., p. 19, fig. 11). It also relates to furniture attributed to John Channon (d. 1779) of St. Martin's Lane, whose signature with the date 1740 appears on brass-inlaid bookcases at Powderham Castle, Devon, bearing the coat-of-arms of Sir William Courtenay. However, it seems that such 'Tea-table' together with 'Tea chest, Tea-Boards etc. all curiously (richly) inlaid with fine Figures of Brass and Mother of Pearl' were a speciality of the Newport Street cabinet-maker Frederick Hintz (also spelt Hinz, Hints and Hinds), who advertised their sale in The Daily Post of 28 May 1738 (ibid., figs. 148-150). This is perhaps the most elaborate of this group of tea-tables, of which the most closely related bears the Bolton crest and is likely to have been purchased by Charles Paulet, 3rd Duke of Bolton (d. 1754).
Another related table is thought to have been supplied in 1741 by the German cabinet-maker Abraham Roentgen (d. 1793) to Landgraf Ludwig VIII of Hessen, and demonstrates the type of work that he executed for a number of leading London cabinet-makers, while working in England in the mid-1730s (ibid., figs. 16 and 17). As a fellow member of the Moravian Brotherhood, Roentgen, who specialised in engraving and 'mosaic' work, would have had a close working relationship with Hinz. The latter is also credited with the manufacture of a bureau-bookcase that bears the same squirrel-and-basket inlay as appears on this table (ibid., fig. 56)
While the table-top conforms to early 18th Century Delft trays, the pillar, claw and decoration correspond to furniture illustrated on a 1730s trade-card thought to have been issued by Thomas Potter, cabinet-maker of High Holborn (C. Gilbert, op. cit., p. 19, fig. 11). It also relates to furniture attributed to John Channon (d. 1779) of St. Martin's Lane, whose signature with the date 1740 appears on brass-inlaid bookcases at Powderham Castle, Devon, bearing the coat-of-arms of Sir William Courtenay. However, it seems that such 'Tea-table' together with 'Tea chest, Tea-Boards etc. all curiously (richly) inlaid with fine Figures of Brass and Mother of Pearl' were a speciality of the Newport Street cabinet-maker Frederick Hintz (also spelt Hinz, Hints and Hinds), who advertised their sale in The Daily Post of 28 May 1738 (ibid., figs. 148-150). This is perhaps the most elaborate of this group of tea-tables, of which the most closely related bears the Bolton crest and is likely to have been purchased by Charles Paulet, 3rd Duke of Bolton (d. 1754).
Another related table is thought to have been supplied in 1741 by the German cabinet-maker Abraham Roentgen (d. 1793) to Landgraf Ludwig VIII of Hessen, and demonstrates the type of work that he executed for a number of leading London cabinet-makers, while working in England in the mid-1730s (ibid., figs. 16 and 17). As a fellow member of the Moravian Brotherhood, Roentgen, who specialised in engraving and 'mosaic' work, would have had a close working relationship with Hinz. The latter is also credited with the manufacture of a bureau-bookcase that bears the same squirrel-and-basket inlay as appears on this table (ibid., fig. 56)