拍品專文
This was made for the Drawing Room and invoiced in 1817 as '1 Circular Oak Loo Table richly inlaid with Holly & white mouldings £28'.
George Bullock's 'sketch' for this centre table for Matthew Robinson Boulton's Drawing Room is likely to have been the pattern sent in January 1816 following his December visit to Tew 'with the view to the preparations of the furniture'. Named a 'Loo table' after a card-game, its circular 'altar' form on Grecian-scrolled 'claw' evolved from the monopodium table illustrated in Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807 (pl. XXXIX). In place of Hope's ebony-inlaid and palm-flowered mahogany table, Bullock has used native oak, probably acquired from Drumlanrig, Scotland and inlaid it with a wreath of white holly in native honeysuckle pattern in keeping with the room curtains of 'Pink embossed twilled Calico ... trimmed with Buff Velvet'. Its tapered stump feet and ribboned inlay correspond to that of Bullock's pattern for 'An English Bed' issued in Ackermann's 1816 Repository of Arts (C. Wainwright et al., George Bullock, Cabinet-Maker, London, 1988, p.123). Its 'claw' is enriched with libation-patterae, en suite with the curtain-rod finials (see lot 162). The inlay patterns survive in the 'Bullock' tracings preserved in the Birmingham City Art Gallery.
George Bullock's 'sketch' for this centre table for Matthew Robinson Boulton's Drawing Room is likely to have been the pattern sent in January 1816 following his December visit to Tew 'with the view to the preparations of the furniture'. Named a 'Loo table' after a card-game, its circular 'altar' form on Grecian-scrolled 'claw' evolved from the monopodium table illustrated in Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807 (pl. XXXIX). In place of Hope's ebony-inlaid and palm-flowered mahogany table, Bullock has used native oak, probably acquired from Drumlanrig, Scotland and inlaid it with a wreath of white holly in native honeysuckle pattern in keeping with the room curtains of 'Pink embossed twilled Calico ... trimmed with Buff Velvet'. Its tapered stump feet and ribboned inlay correspond to that of Bullock's pattern for 'An English Bed' issued in Ackermann's 1816 Repository of Arts (C. Wainwright et al., George Bullock, Cabinet-Maker, London, 1988, p.123). Its 'claw' is enriched with libation-patterae, en suite with the curtain-rod finials (see lot 162). The inlay patterns survive in the 'Bullock' tracings preserved in the Birmingham City Art Gallery.