Lot Essay
This form of rectangular desk, with paired-columnettes flanking plinth-supported pedestals, relates to a desk pattern in the 'antique' manner, published by George Smith in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1808, p. 86. Its reed and foliage enrichments relate to Smith's candelabrum-pedestal pattern, ibid., pl. 139. The end frieze is embellished, in the French manner, with an ormolu bas-relief of a river god mask emerging from acanthus-sprays, and relates to the type of mount found on boulle-enriched writing-tables supplied by Louis Le Gaigneur to the Prince Regent in 1815 (see: M. Levy, 'Sincerest form of Flattery', Country Life, 15 June 1989, fig. 8)