LAST QUARTER 18TH CENTURY, IN THE MANNER OF HENRY CLAY

The card-tables, displaying Roman figurative tablets of festive youths celebrating the Feast of Bacchus on their tops and pastoral trophies of musical instruments on their friezes, are japanned after the Etruscan vase fashion popularized in the 1770s by George III's court architect Robert Adam (d.1792). Such furniture became a speciality of the celebrated Birmingham japanner Henry Clay (d. 1812). Clay introduced ornament inspired by D'Hancarvilles engravings of Sir William Hamilton's, Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities, Naples (1766-67); as noted by a visitor to the premises he opened in London's Covent Garden in the early 1770s. His wares were described as being decorated in black with orange figures in the style of Etruscan vases (see M. Tomlin, Catalogue of Adam Period Furniture, London, 1982, j/5).