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拍品专文
This elegant bureau-dressing-table was commissioned in 1774 by Ninian Home (d.1795), later Governor of Grenada, almost certainly for the principal bedroom apartment of Paxton House in Scotland. The previous year he had purchased this elegant Roman villa, recently built by the Scottish-born architects James and John Adam, from his cousin Patrick Home. It would presumably have served as the dressing-table of his wife Penelope, daughter of Sir Christopher Payne, Bt., and was designed by the celebrated St. Martin's Lane cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (d.1778). It was invoiced on June 7th, 1774 as: 'A neat mahogany Buroe Table with Divisions in the upper drawer and a Slider covered with Green Cloth...£6.12.0.' (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, p. 274).
Its 'trimphal-arch' façade is centred by a recessed 'commode' door and is embellished, in the French manner, with fine ormolu handles framed in silken reed-banded tablets of 'flame-figured' mahogany. The drawer-nests are wreathed by a reed-moulding enriched with a fretted ribbon-guilloche in the French manner, and combined with Grecian ribbon-fretted feet, it epitomises the George III fashionable 'French' or 'antique' style promoted by the third edition of Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1762. The issue of his final Director coincided with the Society of Dilletanti's publication of James 'Athenian' Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, 1762. Since this dressing-table was intended to stand beneath a pier-glass, its restrained rectilinear forms and ribbon-frets combined with medallion-swagged handles, serve to introduce the 'antique' style of decorating interiors with 'tablets' and 'medallions' that the court architect Robert Adam (d.1792) was promoting.
The source of Chippendale's foot fret is an engraving of a Louis XIV sarcophagus-commode. This had been issued in l'Oeuvre Complet de Jean Berain, Paris, n.d., pl. 88, and had inspired Chippendale's 'French Commode' pattern in the Director, pl. XVII. The Greek-key fret also features on a 'Clothes Chest' pattern attributed to Chippendale and published in Household Furniture in Genteel Taste for the Year 1760 (pl. 45). Chippendale introduced it again on his 'large mahogany commode chest-of-drawers' supplied at this period for the St. James's Square mansion of Sir Rowland Winn, 5th Baronet (d. 1785) it was listed in James Christie's sale on the premises on 11 April 1785, lot 7; and sold from the Samuel Messer Collection, in these Rooms, 5 December 1991, lot 130.
Chippendale also introduced the same feet for a secretaire clothes-press supplied to Ninian Home and fitted the same medallioned handles on his 'mahogany dressing table with folding top £5.18.0'. (Gilbert op.cit., vol. II, fig. 95; and A. Coleridge, 'Chippendale Interior-Decorator and House-Furnisher' Apollo, April 1963, pp. 295-302, fig. 12). Writing of such 'Dressing-Tables' in his Director, Chippendale advised: 'The drawer above the recess hath all Conveniences for Dressing places for combs, rings, bottles, boxes etc'. Mrs. Home's accompanying dressing-mirror is also likely to have been dressed with a silk-damask veil as Chippendale recommended.
Its 'trimphal-arch' façade is centred by a recessed 'commode' door and is embellished, in the French manner, with fine ormolu handles framed in silken reed-banded tablets of 'flame-figured' mahogany. The drawer-nests are wreathed by a reed-moulding enriched with a fretted ribbon-guilloche in the French manner, and combined with Grecian ribbon-fretted feet, it epitomises the George III fashionable 'French' or 'antique' style promoted by the third edition of Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1762. The issue of his final Director coincided with the Society of Dilletanti's publication of James 'Athenian' Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, 1762. Since this dressing-table was intended to stand beneath a pier-glass, its restrained rectilinear forms and ribbon-frets combined with medallion-swagged handles, serve to introduce the 'antique' style of decorating interiors with 'tablets' and 'medallions' that the court architect Robert Adam (d.1792) was promoting.
The source of Chippendale's foot fret is an engraving of a Louis XIV sarcophagus-commode. This had been issued in l'Oeuvre Complet de Jean Berain, Paris, n.d., pl. 88, and had inspired Chippendale's 'French Commode' pattern in the Director, pl. XVII. The Greek-key fret also features on a 'Clothes Chest' pattern attributed to Chippendale and published in Household Furniture in Genteel Taste for the Year 1760 (pl. 45). Chippendale introduced it again on his 'large mahogany commode chest-of-drawers' supplied at this period for the St. James's Square mansion of Sir Rowland Winn, 5th Baronet (d. 1785) it was listed in James Christie's sale on the premises on 11 April 1785, lot 7; and sold from the Samuel Messer Collection, in these Rooms, 5 December 1991, lot 130.
Chippendale also introduced the same feet for a secretaire clothes-press supplied to Ninian Home and fitted the same medallioned handles on his 'mahogany dressing table with folding top £5.18.0'. (Gilbert op.cit., vol. II, fig. 95; and A. Coleridge, 'Chippendale Interior-Decorator and House-Furnisher' Apollo, April 1963, pp. 295-302, fig. 12). Writing of such 'Dressing-Tables' in his Director, Chippendale advised: 'The drawer above the recess hath all Conveniences for Dressing places for combs, rings, bottles, boxes etc'. Mrs. Home's accompanying dressing-mirror is also likely to have been dressed with a silk-damask veil as Chippendale recommended.