拍品专文
This 'French' drawing room 'loo' table, bears the lily-flowered and crown-ensigned cipher of Louis-Philippe (1773-1850) who reigned as King of France from 1830 until 1848. Moving to England, Louis-Philippe and his family lived at Claremont, Surrey - for which this table was probably comMissioned through Queen Victoria's Board of Works in the late 1840's.
The Victorian pattern for such a 'Marqueterie Centre Table', with hollow-sided and Vitruvian wave-scrolled 'altar' or 'candelabrum' pedestal, appears to have been invented in the early 1830's by the architect Richard Hicks Bridgens and featured in his Furniture with candelabra and Interior Decoration, 1st ed. 1825 & 1838, which advertised his recent return from service as Superintendent of Public Works in the West Indies. Its 'Louis Quatorze' marquetry on an ebony ground is executed in the Dutch fashion adopted in the 1820's by the Tottenham Court Road 'Cabinet inlayer and Buhl manufacturer' Robert Blake. The firm, which had been trading in the early 1840's as Blake, Geo. & Brothers, inlayers, etc' in Tottenam Court Road and Mount Street, Mayfair were renamed George Blake & Co. in the late 1840's (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds, 1996, p.18; and M.P.Levy, Furniture History Society Newsletter, no. 158, May 2005). The form of the base of this table relates to tables supplied by Edward Holmes Baldock, one of which was produced for The Duke of Buccleuch in 1840, and was sold by The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Dalkeith House, Scotland, Christie's, London, 1 April 1971, lot 43. It is now at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (C. Gilbert Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, vol. II, London, 1978, no. 395).
The Victorian pattern for such a 'Marqueterie Centre Table', with hollow-sided and Vitruvian wave-scrolled 'altar' or 'candelabrum' pedestal, appears to have been invented in the early 1830's by the architect Richard Hicks Bridgens and featured in his Furniture with candelabra and Interior Decoration, 1st ed. 1825 & 1838, which advertised his recent return from service as Superintendent of Public Works in the West Indies. Its 'Louis Quatorze' marquetry on an ebony ground is executed in the Dutch fashion adopted in the 1820's by the Tottenham Court Road 'Cabinet inlayer and Buhl manufacturer' Robert Blake. The firm, which had been trading in the early 1840's as Blake, Geo. & Brothers, inlayers, etc' in Tottenam Court Road and Mount Street, Mayfair were renamed George Blake & Co. in the late 1840's (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture, Leeds, 1996, p.18; and M.P.Levy, Furniture History Society Newsletter, no. 158, May 2005). The form of the base of this table relates to tables supplied by Edward Holmes Baldock, one of which was produced for The Duke of Buccleuch in 1840, and was sold by The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Dalkeith House, Scotland, Christie's, London, 1 April 1971, lot 43. It is now at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (C. Gilbert Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, vol. II, London, 1978, no. 395).