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Lot Essay
This sideboard-table is designed in the George II Roman fashion with its marble top supported on a richly carved frame. Beneath an echinous-moulded cornice, its frieze is enwreathed by a ribbon-fret that ties a lambrequined cartouche of a triumphal Venus shell badge; while Roman foliage issues from the waved and shell-enriched volutes of its truss-scrolled legs. Its antique fret pattern featured in a 1739 pattern for Decorations for Cabinet-works published the following year in B. Langley's The City and Country Builders and Workmans Treasury of Designs, 1740 (pl.98); while the basic table pattern also featured in 1739 in William Jones' Gentleman or Builders Companion, (pl.29). Its luxuriant foliage relates to the fashion promoted by the Italian artist Gaetano Brunetti's Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments, 1736, and adopted by the court architects William Kent and John Vardy (see the frontispiece of J. Vardy's, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744). The present table's leg pattern, lacking the reed-gardrooned borders, as well as the same frieze borders of pearled reeds and flowered ribbon-guilloches feature on the marble-topped table thought to have been supplied to Thomas, 2nd Viscount Weymouth and inventoried in 1740 at Longleat, Wiltshire. It was described as 'a Fine Egyptian Marble Table with Gold Veins standing on a rich Carved & Gilt Frame' (sold by the Marquess of Bath from Longleat, Christie's London, 13 & 14 June 2002, lot 337).
Rudding Park was built for the Hon. William Gordon and works began in 1807, possibly by Lewis Wyatt. In 1824 it was purchased unfinished by John Radcliffe and completed in 1825 by R. D. Chantrell. Rudding remained in the Radcliffe family until the Christie's house sale in 1972. The sale included a further marble-topped table from the Dining Room as the previous lot (lot 152) which displays a very similar double scallop-shell to the apron - perhaps suggesting that both were executed in the same workshop.
Rudding Park was built for the Hon. William Gordon and works began in 1807, possibly by Lewis Wyatt. In 1824 it was purchased unfinished by John Radcliffe and completed in 1825 by R. D. Chantrell. Rudding remained in the Radcliffe family until the Christie's house sale in 1972. The sale included a further marble-topped table from the Dining Room as the previous lot (lot 152) which displays a very similar double scallop-shell to the apron - perhaps suggesting that both were executed in the same workshop.