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Lot Essay
These window-pier card-tables, with their baluster pillars and Grecian altar plinths, are carved and brass-inlaid with palm-flowered Roman acanthus in the George IV French/antique fashion popularized by the Prince Regent and his inner circle of francophile friends in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. While this 'buhl' inlay is taken from prototypes as executed for Versailles by Louis XIV's Royal ebeniste Andre-Charles Boulle and the designs of Jean Berain, the golden inlay of meadering English flowered foliage relates most closely to the tracings of cabinet-maker George Bullock's designs preserved in the Birmingham City Museum (C. Wainwright et al., George Bullock, London, 1988, p. 98, fig. 42 and table, no. 35).
The tables do not conform to any one of the fashionable makers working in the court-inspired style. They may have been executed within the circle of the French trained cabinet-maker and upholder Louis Constantin Le Gaigneur (active 1814-1821) who worked almost exclusively for George IV and his circle or one of his competitors such as Thomas Parker (active 1805-1830) or Town and Emanuel, although all of these makers worked in a more conscious French manner. Interestingly, an elaborate collectors cabinet which displays very similar scrolled bands in combination with Berainesque strapwork panels to the sides was sold in these Rooms, 13 April 2000, lot 26.
A documented brass-inlaid rosewood suite executed by the Wardour Street cabinet-maker John Wellsman for Creedy Park, Devonshire in 1820 includes a comparable pair of games tables (sold by the late Sir Anthony Ferguson Davie, 6th Baronet of Creedy, Sotheby's, London, 7 November 1997, lot 88). Another potential maker is the firm of Gillows who supplied a group of related brass-inlaid rosewood furniture for Hackwood Park, Hampshire in 1813 (see Hackwood, Christie's house sale, 20-22 April 1998, lots 20-22) and Belton House, Lincolnshire (see Christie's House sale, 30 April-2 May 1984, notably lot 89, a table which combines brass inlay with stylized carving to the base).
The tables do not conform to any one of the fashionable makers working in the court-inspired style. They may have been executed within the circle of the French trained cabinet-maker and upholder Louis Constantin Le Gaigneur (active 1814-1821) who worked almost exclusively for George IV and his circle or one of his competitors such as Thomas Parker (active 1805-1830) or Town and Emanuel, although all of these makers worked in a more conscious French manner. Interestingly, an elaborate collectors cabinet which displays very similar scrolled bands in combination with Berainesque strapwork panels to the sides was sold in these Rooms, 13 April 2000, lot 26.
A documented brass-inlaid rosewood suite executed by the Wardour Street cabinet-maker John Wellsman for Creedy Park, Devonshire in 1820 includes a comparable pair of games tables (sold by the late Sir Anthony Ferguson Davie, 6th Baronet of Creedy, Sotheby's, London, 7 November 1997, lot 88). Another potential maker is the firm of Gillows who supplied a group of related brass-inlaid rosewood furniture for Hackwood Park, Hampshire in 1813 (see Hackwood, Christie's house sale, 20-22 April 1998, lots 20-22) and Belton House, Lincolnshire (see Christie's House sale, 30 April-2 May 1984, notably lot 89, a table which combines brass inlay with stylized carving to the base).