ATTRIBUTED TO MAYHEW AND INCE, THIRD QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

This commode can be confidently attributed to the pre-eminent cabinet-makers John Mayhew and William Ince of Golden Square, London. The idiosyncratic use of yew as a veneer has been identified as a leitmotif of their work. A group of yewwood and marquetry serpentine commodes of a similar profile has been identified with the firm. While these are mostly more elaborately conceived, with ormolu mounts and floral decoration, the form, with its canted angles and distinctive bracket feet, are features shared by this example. Prominent within the group is the example from Linton Park, Kent most recently sold Christie's, London, 5 July 1990, lot 141. Another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is illustrated in R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 1954, rev. ed., vol. II, p. 117, fig. 19. A further example with carved angles was sold from the collection of the late Margharita, Lady Howard de Walden, C.B.E., Sotheby's, London, 2 December 1977, lot 93; another was formerly in Lord Leverhulme's collection (see The Sir Michael Sobell Collection, Christie's, London, 23 June 1994, lot 77 for the Leverhulme example and a listing of the group).