Lot Essay
This curved and hollow-centred sideboard-table was commissioned by the 3rd Duke of Newcastle (d.1794) and executed for a dining-room niche at Clumber, Nottinghamshire, probably after a pattern by the architect Stephen Wright (d.1780). The Duke had employed Wright, Deputy Surveyor of King George III's Board of Works, throughout the 1770s in the aggrandisement of his house. The sideboard niche would have served as a focal point of the dining-room and its design is closely related to that of the statuary marble chimneypiece.
The chimneypiece frieze has a 'sporting' frieze derived from a design by the 17th Century Italian ornamentalist Stefano della Bella whose prints were immensely influential. The Clumber frieze is derived from his Ornamenti di fregi et fogliami, circa 1650, pl. 12, which depicts a hound-embracing youth emerging from Roman foliage. Wright's proposed design provided alternate treatment for the chimneypiece's voluted-truss pilasters (S. Lambert, ed., 'Pattern and Design', exhibition catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983, pp. 42-44, no. 2.1). The chimneypiece as executed contains a number of features incorporated in the design of this table, apart from the simplified but recognisable foliate scrolls on the angles and in the centre of the frieze. The chimneypiece and table share the leaf-filled arches at the bottom of each leg and above the plinths. The straight beading on the table is a more complex interlaced pattern on the chimneypiece and the fluted frieze corresponds to that of the room's chair rail. The ornament for the legs' capitals derive from the 'Spalatro' capital illustrated in Robert Adam's Ruins of the Emperor Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro of 1762. Indeed the table relates to Robert Adam's 1773 pattern for sideboard tables executed for Sir Watkin Williams Wynn's house in St. James's Square and attributed to Richard Collins (d.1780; see: C. Musgrave, Adam and Hepplewhite Furniture, London, 1966, fig. 132). The chimneypiece is now at Buxted Park, Sussex (Country Life, 11 August 1950, p. 442, fig. 2).
The set of thirty-eight dining-chairs from Clumber are now at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire (illustrated in Country Life, 12 September 1908, p. 359). Their Clumber inventory number is N4809, only three away from this sideboard and reassurance of its position in the house when the inventory was taken.
The chimneypiece frieze has a 'sporting' frieze derived from a design by the 17th Century Italian ornamentalist Stefano della Bella whose prints were immensely influential. The Clumber frieze is derived from his Ornamenti di fregi et fogliami, circa 1650, pl. 12, which depicts a hound-embracing youth emerging from Roman foliage. Wright's proposed design provided alternate treatment for the chimneypiece's voluted-truss pilasters (S. Lambert, ed., 'Pattern and Design', exhibition catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983, pp. 42-44, no. 2.1). The chimneypiece as executed contains a number of features incorporated in the design of this table, apart from the simplified but recognisable foliate scrolls on the angles and in the centre of the frieze. The chimneypiece and table share the leaf-filled arches at the bottom of each leg and above the plinths. The straight beading on the table is a more complex interlaced pattern on the chimneypiece and the fluted frieze corresponds to that of the room's chair rail. The ornament for the legs' capitals derive from the 'Spalatro' capital illustrated in Robert Adam's Ruins of the Emperor Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro of 1762. Indeed the table relates to Robert Adam's 1773 pattern for sideboard tables executed for Sir Watkin Williams Wynn's house in St. James's Square and attributed to Richard Collins (d.1780; see: C. Musgrave, Adam and Hepplewhite Furniture, London, 1966, fig. 132). The chimneypiece is now at Buxted Park, Sussex (Country Life, 11 August 1950, p. 442, fig. 2).
The set of thirty-eight dining-chairs from Clumber are now at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire (illustrated in Country Life, 12 September 1908, p. 359). Their Clumber inventory number is N4809, only three away from this sideboard and reassurance of its position in the house when the inventory was taken.