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拍品專文
These marquetry commodes evolved from the Louis XV 'pittoresque' style introduced during the 1750s by emigré craftsmen such as Pierre Langlois, who was noted for making 'all sorts of curious fine inlaid work, particularly commodes in the foreign taste' in T. Mortimer's Universal Director of 1763. This fashionable form was subsequently adopted in the late 1760s by John Linnell, cabinet-maker and upholsterer of Berkeley Square and the emigré craftsmen Christopher Furlogh and Georg Haupt who worked in his workshop.
With their stylised floral tendrils inlaid onto an 'Etruscan' black rosewood ground, these commodes reflect the slightly more Neo-classical aesthetic of the early 1770s. In terms of language, they perhaps most closely resemble a group of marquetry furniture ascribed to Christopher Furlogh and his workshop by Lucy Wood in Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, pp.145-146. This group comprises a pair of commodes and a pembroke table from Castle Forbes (the commodes sold anonymously in these Rooms, 24 November 2005, lot 130), as well as a small table in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, which was published in John Hayward, 'A newly discovered commode signed by Christopher Furlogh', Burlington Magazine, October 1972, pp.704-13).
The Paris-trained Swedish ébéniste Christopher Furlogh (d. c. 1790) is first recorded in 1767. In that year he signed a vase-embellished commode at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, which is thought to have been executed by Furlogh at the start of his London career with the Berkeley Square cabinet-makers William and John Linnell, and before the establishment of his Tottenham Court Road workshops and court appointment as 'Cabinet-maker, Inlayer and Ebeniste' to George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. Furlogh's own furniture and the stock-in-trade of his Gerrard Street house was sold by Christie's on 21 February 1787 and described as consisting of a 'Great variety of Elegant Mahogany and Sattin-Wood articles, curiously [finely] Inlaid, several of which are on a new Construction, such as Bookcases, Commodes...' (G. Beard and C. Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, pp. 323-325).
Interestingly a design for a window pier by William and John Linnell - with small serpentine and palm-wrapped oval mirror (like lot 58) above a French commode - survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
With their stylised floral tendrils inlaid onto an 'Etruscan' black rosewood ground, these commodes reflect the slightly more Neo-classical aesthetic of the early 1770s. In terms of language, they perhaps most closely resemble a group of marquetry furniture ascribed to Christopher Furlogh and his workshop by Lucy Wood in Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, pp.145-146. This group comprises a pair of commodes and a pembroke table from Castle Forbes (the commodes sold anonymously in these Rooms, 24 November 2005, lot 130), as well as a small table in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, which was published in John Hayward, 'A newly discovered commode signed by Christopher Furlogh', Burlington Magazine, October 1972, pp.704-13).
The Paris-trained Swedish ébéniste Christopher Furlogh (d. c. 1790) is first recorded in 1767. In that year he signed a vase-embellished commode at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, which is thought to have been executed by Furlogh at the start of his London career with the Berkeley Square cabinet-makers William and John Linnell, and before the establishment of his Tottenham Court Road workshops and court appointment as 'Cabinet-maker, Inlayer and Ebeniste' to George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. Furlogh's own furniture and the stock-in-trade of his Gerrard Street house was sold by Christie's on 21 February 1787 and described as consisting of a 'Great variety of Elegant Mahogany and Sattin-Wood articles, curiously [finely] Inlaid, several of which are on a new Construction, such as Bookcases, Commodes...' (G. Beard and C. Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1986, pp. 323-325).
Interestingly a design for a window pier by William and John Linnell - with small serpentine and palm-wrapped oval mirror (like lot 58) above a French commode - survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.