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Lot Essay
MAYHEW AND INCE
This cabinet, which accords well with the fashionable 'Etruscan' columbarium style introduced to bedroom apartments by the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792), was designed by the Golden Square cabinet-maker William Ince. Intended to be dressed with flower-vases and possibly a clock, it is veneered with marble-figured tablets of yew bordered in the 'Etruscan' manner with mosaic-chequered ribbons in black and white. This wholly idiosyncratic use of timber and ebonised borders is characteristic of Mayhew and Ince's production. Their partnership was established in the late 1750s and Ince contributed to Household Furniture in Genteel Taste shortly afterwards in 1760, as well as being joint author with John Mayhew of an Anglo-French pattern-book entitled The Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762. Amongst their related yew-marbled furniture were card-tables and commodes invoiced to Sir Brook Bridges, Bt. of Goodnestone Park, Canterbury in 1764 and a 'French' commode invoiced to James West of Alscot Park in 1766 (The Royal Museum, Canterbury, Treasures from Kent Houses, 1984, nos. 56 and 57).
The arguments on stylistic grounds are made more compelling thanks to the survival of an almost identical secretaire at Chevening House, Kent. Lady Stanhope's 'Scribble Book' of 1775 included a payment to Mayhew and Ince for a 'black bordered Commode London £10 10s' - and it was they who presumably supplied the secretaire exhibited at 'Treasures from Kent Houses', Exhibition Catalogue, Canterbury, 1984, no. 63). Another, although fitted as a cartonnier or filing cabinet and presumably therefore conceived as a pair to a secretaire, formerly with Hotspur, was offered anonymously in these Rooms, 28 April 2002, lot 105, whilst a further similar cabinet was with Paul Coutts Ltd., Edinburgh and is illustrated in The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair catalogue, 1989, p. 77.
Elegantly serpentined in the early George III 'French' manner, the marquetry displays sacred urns in golden tablets that are conceived in the Goût Grec fashion and celebrate lyric poetry. Laurels festoon the Grecian ribbon-frets of the acanthus-enriched borders and entwine the lidded urns that evoke histories of sacrifices at love's altar. These French-fashioned and plinth-supported urns, enriched with strigil fluting and Grecian frets, derive in particular from a pattern included in Vases Nouveaux that was issued in the 1760s by the artist Maurice Jacques, who was employed as a dessinateur at the Gobelins under the direction of the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot (d. 1780) (S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, Paris, 1968, figs. 391-395).
This cabinet, which accords well with the fashionable 'Etruscan' columbarium style introduced to bedroom apartments by the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792), was designed by the Golden Square cabinet-maker William Ince. Intended to be dressed with flower-vases and possibly a clock, it is veneered with marble-figured tablets of yew bordered in the 'Etruscan' manner with mosaic-chequered ribbons in black and white. This wholly idiosyncratic use of timber and ebonised borders is characteristic of Mayhew and Ince's production. Their partnership was established in the late 1750s and Ince contributed to Household Furniture in Genteel Taste shortly afterwards in 1760, as well as being joint author with John Mayhew of an Anglo-French pattern-book entitled The Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762. Amongst their related yew-marbled furniture were card-tables and commodes invoiced to Sir Brook Bridges, Bt. of Goodnestone Park, Canterbury in 1764 and a 'French' commode invoiced to James West of Alscot Park in 1766 (The Royal Museum, Canterbury, Treasures from Kent Houses, 1984, nos. 56 and 57).
The arguments on stylistic grounds are made more compelling thanks to the survival of an almost identical secretaire at Chevening House, Kent. Lady Stanhope's 'Scribble Book' of 1775 included a payment to Mayhew and Ince for a 'black bordered Commode London £10 10s' - and it was they who presumably supplied the secretaire exhibited at 'Treasures from Kent Houses', Exhibition Catalogue, Canterbury, 1984, no. 63). Another, although fitted as a cartonnier or filing cabinet and presumably therefore conceived as a pair to a secretaire, formerly with Hotspur, was offered anonymously in these Rooms, 28 April 2002, lot 105, whilst a further similar cabinet was with Paul Coutts Ltd., Edinburgh and is illustrated in The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair catalogue, 1989, p. 77.
Elegantly serpentined in the early George III 'French' manner, the marquetry displays sacred urns in golden tablets that are conceived in the Goût Grec fashion and celebrate lyric poetry. Laurels festoon the Grecian ribbon-frets of the acanthus-enriched borders and entwine the lidded urns that evoke histories of sacrifices at love's altar. These French-fashioned and plinth-supported urns, enriched with strigil fluting and Grecian frets, derive in particular from a pattern included in Vases Nouveaux that was issued in the 1760s by the artist Maurice Jacques, who was employed as a dessinateur at the Gobelins under the direction of the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot (d. 1780) (S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, Paris, 1968, figs. 391-395).