POSSIBLY BY GILLOWS, CIRCA 1830

The Wentworth Woodhouse library-table is designed in the George IV Grecian Louis Quatorze fashion, associated with the court architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville (d.1840). It is wreathed in a golden ribbon-guilloche of 'boulle' inlaid palms to evoke wisdom and 'support for the arts' and derived from temple columns adjoining the temple of Athena Minerva; while robustly carved palms and 'Pan' reeds issue from the wave-scrolled volutes that terminate its serpentined truss pilasters. Commissioned for Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire by William Watson-Wentworth, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam (d. 1833) it relates to the magnificent 1820s French-fashioned furnishings introduced at Tatton Park, Cheshire by the architect Lewis Wyatt (d. 1853) in association with Gillow the London and Lancaster cabinet-makers and upholsterers. The Earl is recorded as commissioning furniture from Gillow in 1822, and they appear to have been employed during the following ten years. They provided related, but more elaborately carved and richly gilt tables, for the Earl's adjoining Drawing Room (later known as the 'Whistle-Jacket Room'), and a suite of twelve giltwood armchairs en suite, was sold in the Wentworth sale, Christie's, London, 8 July 1998, lot 83. The name of one of Gillows' employees alongside the date 1832 has been recorded on an accompanying sofa (illustrated in situ, C. Hussey, English Country Houses: Early Georgian, London, 1955, p. 154, fig. 252).