CIRCA 1810-15, ATTRIBUTED TO GILLOWS

Supplied en suite with the following writing-table (lot 552), this 'buhl' filigreed centre table is designed in the robust French/antique manner introduced in George IV's Regency by Messrs Gillow of London and Lancaster as appropriate for fashionable library/living-rooms. Related golden brass tablets, fretted with ribbon-tied acanthus in the Louis Quatorze Roman fashion, featured on a rosewood and 'buhl' inlaid library-table supplied in 1813 by Gillows for Hackwood, Hampshire (S. E. Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London, Woodbridge, 2008, vol I, pp. 289-292). This style of table was popularised by one illustrated in Thomas Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, and a closely related 1822 design for one of this pattern features in Gillows' Estimate Sketch Books, no. 3146. A related table also features in one of Gillow of Oxford Street's room plans of circa 1817 in the Victoria and Albert Museum (museum no. E.390-1955); while another appears in a design dated to about 1830 for a library/living-room (Stuart, ibid, vol II, p. 352, pls. E9 & E10).