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Lot Essay
The Drawing Room table, conceived in the George IV French antique fashion, celebrates lyric poetry's triumph, and the sun god Apollo as Mt. Parnassus leader of the Muses of Artistic Inspiration.
A torus-moulding of Apollonian laurels band its golden octagon tablet, whose ray-parquetry is wreathed in Louis Quatorze fashion by an inlaid garland of pearled and light-reflecting sunflowers that are tied by golden foliage in a rosy-hued and boulle-filigreed shell ribbon. More palms flower its Pompeian pillars and central baluster, and the reeded trusses that support its altar-drum plinth.
Its style was invented by Nicholas Morel following his 1826 appointment as George IV's 'Upholsterer in Ordinary', and his consultation with the celebrated Parisian ébéniste François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter (d. 1841) concerning the furnishing of Windsor Castle under the direction of the architect Sir Jeffrey Wyatville (d. 1840). It would have been executed in the Aldersgate Street workshops run by Morel and his partner George Seddon. It relates in particular to a Windsor Castle tripod-pillared drum table, which Morel invoiced in 1828 as being '.....highly polished with ormoulu [sic] taurus moulding on the edge, with frieze and cornice, supported by large pillar to the center, and 3 d[itt]o with richly carved foliage, capitals, bases and collars, gilt in the best manner in mat and burnished gold, terminating on a shaped plinth with chased ormoulu scroll and foliage feet...' (H. Roberts, For the King's Pleasure: The Furnishing and Decoration of George IVs Apartments at Windsor Castle, London, 2001, p. 360, fig. 441). Morel also introduced related boulle inlay on Windsor furniture, such as a sofa-table invoiced in 1828 as having a '...handsome buhl border of pearl and metals, richly inlaid with tortoiseshell...' (ibid., p. 83, no. 88).
The present table, which bears the name of the Drummond family, may have been commissioned in the mid-1830s by Andrew Robert Drummond (d. 1865) at the same time that he was employing Wyatville to aggrandise Cadland, Hampshire.
A torus-moulding of Apollonian laurels band its golden octagon tablet, whose ray-parquetry is wreathed in Louis Quatorze fashion by an inlaid garland of pearled and light-reflecting sunflowers that are tied by golden foliage in a rosy-hued and boulle-filigreed shell ribbon. More palms flower its Pompeian pillars and central baluster, and the reeded trusses that support its altar-drum plinth.
Its style was invented by Nicholas Morel following his 1826 appointment as George IV's 'Upholsterer in Ordinary', and his consultation with the celebrated Parisian ébéniste François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter (d. 1841) concerning the furnishing of Windsor Castle under the direction of the architect Sir Jeffrey Wyatville (d. 1840). It would have been executed in the Aldersgate Street workshops run by Morel and his partner George Seddon. It relates in particular to a Windsor Castle tripod-pillared drum table, which Morel invoiced in 1828 as being '.....highly polished with ormoulu [sic] taurus moulding on the edge, with frieze and cornice, supported by large pillar to the center, and 3 d[itt]o with richly carved foliage, capitals, bases and collars, gilt in the best manner in mat and burnished gold, terminating on a shaped plinth with chased ormoulu scroll and foliage feet...' (H. Roberts, For the King's Pleasure: The Furnishing and Decoration of George IVs Apartments at Windsor Castle, London, 2001, p. 360, fig. 441). Morel also introduced related boulle inlay on Windsor furniture, such as a sofa-table invoiced in 1828 as having a '...handsome buhl border of pearl and metals, richly inlaid with tortoiseshell...' (ibid., p. 83, no. 88).
The present table, which bears the name of the Drummond family, may have been commissioned in the mid-1830s by Andrew Robert Drummond (d. 1865) at the same time that he was employing Wyatville to aggrandise Cadland, Hampshire.