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Lot Essay
This elegant oval-medallion table with herm-tapered legs is designed in the George III Roman fashion and reflects the fashionable form of drawing-room sofa/writing-table of the 1770s. Its golden ribbon-banded top evokes lyric poetry with tablet’ parquetry framing a festive bacchic lion head displayed in a pearled Venus-shelled cartouche that is festooned with Apollo’s laurels.
Amongst related tables is one at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, that the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort is likely to have commissioned from the celebrated Golden Square firm of Messrs John Mayhew and William Ince from the late 1770s (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes , London, 1994, p.231. Figs, 218-9). Mayhew and Ince have also been credited with the manufacture of two commodes with the same lion and shell marquetry. They also feature some of the latter table’s marquetry ornament ( formerly in the London collection of the 1st Lord Leverhulme and sold Knight, Frank and Rutley, 19th-23rd October, 1925, lot 779).
Amongst related tables is one at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, that the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort is likely to have commissioned from the celebrated Golden Square firm of Messrs John Mayhew and William Ince from the late 1770s (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes , London, 1994, p.231. Figs, 218-9). Mayhew and Ince have also been credited with the manufacture of two commodes with the same lion and shell marquetry. They also feature some of the latter table’s marquetry ornament ( formerly in the London collection of the 1st Lord Leverhulme and sold Knight, Frank and Rutley, 19th-23rd October, 1925, lot 779).