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拍品专文
The golden pier-tables celebrate the poet's concept of an Arcadian perpetual Spring or 'Ver perpetuum', with the tops painted with beribboned and garlanded flower-vases that are displayed in 'grisaille' patera-medallions, while laurels entwine the ribboned borders that are inlaid with tulipwood.
The friezes of their bowed fronts and hollowed 'altar' angles display portrait-medallions while flowers festoon their elegant taper-hermed legs. Their compass-drawn shape reflects the George III antique fashion introduced around 1780, and popularised by A. Hepplewhite and Co.'s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788. Gillows were also making a pattern with hollowed sides in 1793 (L. Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, pl. 12). The floral ornament relates to the French fashion introduced by 'peintre ébénistes' such as the cabinet-maker and decorative-painter George Brookshaw (d.1823), who established his Curzon Street practice in the late 1770s. The most celebrated manufacturers of this style of furniture were George Seddon, Sons & Shackleton of Aldersgate Street. Another highly decorative table of this same form has been attributed to them as its painted ribbon-bands of Juno's peacock-feathers also feature on their suite of parlour furniture supplied in 1790 for Hauteville House, Guernsey. The satinwood Hauteville chairs, which were described as having 'round fronts & hollow caned seats neatly japanned' also had arched 'Hepplewhite' shield-backs that echoed the form of the present tables (C. Gilbert, 'Seddon, Sons & Shackleton', Furniture History, 1997, pp. 1-5 and figs. 21, 23 and 24). Hepplewhite's Guide, 3rd ed., 1794, wrote about their light cane-seated chairs that 'A new and very elegant fashion has arisen within these few years, of finishing them with painted or japanned work, which gives a rich and splendid appearance to the minuter parts of the ornaments, which are generally thrown in by the painter'.
A similar but larger table is illustrated in H. Cescinsky, English Furniture of the 18th Century, London, 1911, vol. III, p. 302. A very closely related table was reputedly presented by Nelson to Lady Hamilton, passed by descent to Lady Binning, and is illustrated in M. Harris, Old English Furniture, 1935, p. 65.
The friezes of their bowed fronts and hollowed 'altar' angles display portrait-medallions while flowers festoon their elegant taper-hermed legs. Their compass-drawn shape reflects the George III antique fashion introduced around 1780, and popularised by A. Hepplewhite and Co.'s Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788. Gillows were also making a pattern with hollowed sides in 1793 (L. Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs 1760-1800, Royston, 1995, pl. 12). The floral ornament relates to the French fashion introduced by 'peintre ébénistes' such as the cabinet-maker and decorative-painter George Brookshaw (d.1823), who established his Curzon Street practice in the late 1770s. The most celebrated manufacturers of this style of furniture were George Seddon, Sons & Shackleton of Aldersgate Street. Another highly decorative table of this same form has been attributed to them as its painted ribbon-bands of Juno's peacock-feathers also feature on their suite of parlour furniture supplied in 1790 for Hauteville House, Guernsey. The satinwood Hauteville chairs, which were described as having 'round fronts & hollow caned seats neatly japanned' also had arched 'Hepplewhite' shield-backs that echoed the form of the present tables (C. Gilbert, 'Seddon, Sons & Shackleton', Furniture History, 1997, pp. 1-5 and figs. 21, 23 and 24). Hepplewhite's Guide, 3rd ed., 1794, wrote about their light cane-seated chairs that 'A new and very elegant fashion has arisen within these few years, of finishing them with painted or japanned work, which gives a rich and splendid appearance to the minuter parts of the ornaments, which are generally thrown in by the painter'.
A similar but larger table is illustrated in H. Cescinsky, English Furniture of the 18th Century, London, 1911, vol. III, p. 302. A very closely related table was reputedly presented by Nelson to Lady Hamilton, passed by descent to Lady Binning, and is illustrated in M. Harris, Old English Furniture, 1935, p. 65.