Lot Essay
The furniture commissioned from Sir Edwin Lutyens for the visitors waiting room at No. 120 Pall Mall is both rare and justifiably considered to be some of his very finest work in the medium.
Exemplary of his style, the suite employs many features first seen in the New Delhi project. Notably, the scale and proportion of the seat backs and the "clapperless" bell motif of Lutyens' "Delhi Order" on the legs of both the chairs and the stools, bear witness to a particular refinement of those designs which presently exist only in India.
Drawings for the suite dated 1931, now lodged in the British Architectural Library, show a meticulous attention to, and treatment of curving forms; in particular, drawings no. 109 and 110 of the writing table wherein the curvature of the drum-section pedestals is explored and reciprocated in the shape of the top and in the pattern of the skins of the tooled leather writing surface.
We are grateful to Candia Lutyens for her help in preparing the catalogue entries of these three lots
Exemplary of his style, the suite employs many features first seen in the New Delhi project. Notably, the scale and proportion of the seat backs and the "clapperless" bell motif of Lutyens' "Delhi Order" on the legs of both the chairs and the stools, bear witness to a particular refinement of those designs which presently exist only in India.
Drawings for the suite dated 1931, now lodged in the British Architectural Library, show a meticulous attention to, and treatment of curving forms; in particular, drawings no. 109 and 110 of the writing table wherein the curvature of the drum-section pedestals is explored and reciprocated in the shape of the top and in the pattern of the skins of the tooled leather writing surface.
We are grateful to Candia Lutyens for her help in preparing the catalogue entries of these three lots