Lot Essay
With their 'Chinese red' japanning, gold-enriched in the 'antique' manner with an acanthus diaper pattern zig-zagged by pearl strings, these pier-glasses relate to the documented oeuvre of Giles Grendey (1693-1780), joiner and chairmaker of St. John's, Clerkenwell. Elected to the livery of the Joiner's Company in 1729, Grendey was heavily involved in the export trade, and indeed the fire at his workshops in 1731 saw the destruction of
About #1000 of goods, that the cabinet-maker had pack'd for exportation against the next morning
Paramount among his foreign commissions was the considerable suite of scarlet-japanned furniture acquired by the Duke of Infantado for his castle at Lazcano, Northern Spain. Amongst the seventy-two recorded pieces of the suite are a pair of pier-glasses of related, although of more elaborate form with verre eglomisé mirrored borders (R.W. Symonds, 'Giles Grendey (1693-1780) and the export of English Furniture to Spain', Apollo, December 1935, p. 341, fig. VI). As C. Gilbert noted in 'Furniture by Giles Grendey for the Spanish trade', Antiques, April 1971, p. 545 Adolph Loewi, who purchased the greater part of the Lazcano suite, recorded two sizes of mirrors - (8155 - 1 mirror; 8156 - 1 small mirror), suggesting that Grendey may well have executed girandoles of the unusually small proportions of the Houghton pair
The bevelled-mirror frames, however, also correspond to the pier-glasses supplied by John Gumley (d.1729) for Hampton Court Palace, circa 1715 (illustrated in R. Edwards and M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, p. 129, fig. 1). Gumley's advertisement in John Houghton's A Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, 6 April 1694, announced
At Salisbury-Exchange in the Strand, when the manufactory was kept, by John Gumley, cabinet-maker, at the corner of Norfolk-street.... is a sale of all sorts of Cabinetwork, as Japan cabinets, Indian and English, with looking-glasses
It is of interest to note, therefore, that a pair of japanned sconces, almost certainly supplied by Gumley, are in the Communication Corridor at Hampton Court Palace
About #1000 of goods, that the cabinet-maker had pack'd for exportation against the next morning
Paramount among his foreign commissions was the considerable suite of scarlet-japanned furniture acquired by the Duke of Infantado for his castle at Lazcano, Northern Spain. Amongst the seventy-two recorded pieces of the suite are a pair of pier-glasses of related, although of more elaborate form with verre eglomisé mirrored borders (R.W. Symonds, 'Giles Grendey (1693-1780) and the export of English Furniture to Spain', Apollo, December 1935, p. 341, fig. VI). As C. Gilbert noted in 'Furniture by Giles Grendey for the Spanish trade', Antiques, April 1971, p. 545 Adolph Loewi, who purchased the greater part of the Lazcano suite, recorded two sizes of mirrors - (8155 - 1 mirror; 8156 - 1 small mirror), suggesting that Grendey may well have executed girandoles of the unusually small proportions of the Houghton pair
The bevelled-mirror frames, however, also correspond to the pier-glasses supplied by John Gumley (d.1729) for Hampton Court Palace, circa 1715 (illustrated in R. Edwards and M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, p. 129, fig. 1). Gumley's advertisement in John Houghton's A Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, 6 April 1694, announced
At Salisbury-Exchange in the Strand, when the manufactory was kept, by John Gumley, cabinet-maker, at the corner of Norfolk-street.... is a sale of all sorts of Cabinetwork, as Japan cabinets, Indian and English, with looking-glasses
It is of interest to note, therefore, that a pair of japanned sconces, almost certainly supplied by Gumley, are in the Communication Corridor at Hampton Court Palace