MID-19TH CENTURY, IN THE LOUIS XV-STYLE

Such French writing- tables became an important element of fashionable English drawing rooms as they were transformed into early l9th century living rooms. This bureau plat, elegantly serpentined and ormolu-enriched in the Louis XV manner, served as the sofa-table for a sofa, that flanked the Saloon hearth, where it appears in an February 1862 watercolour of the room executed by the Hon. Mrs Mary Wombwell (in an album retained by the Myddelton family). It is likely to have been introduced in the 1840s by Colonel Robert Myddelton Biddulph together with a French boulle mantel-clock.

This bureau plat appears to be that displayed in the Saloon in the Howard de Walden family portrait executed in the 1920s by John Lavery (see M. Howard de Walden, Pages from my Life, 1965, p.47).