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Lot Essay
This unusual cabinet was purchased by Clinton Ledyard Blair, who founded the banking firm Blair and Company with his father and grandfather in 1890, primarily to manage the railroad interests of the Gould family. The cabinet (and another thought to have been made to match for Blair), once stood in Blairsden, his magnificent mansion in Peapack, New Jersey built by Carriere and Hastings between 1898 and 1903. Thirty-eight rooms and 62,000 square feet, Blairsden was situated atop a leveled mountain to provide spectacular views, while a funicular railway transported materials to the house during its construction. The cabinets appear in a photograph of the ballroom/living room in 1949, the year of Ledyard Blair's death. Each cabinet has descended within a separate branch of the family.
Other identical cabinets display the same heraldic crest of a leopard facing either left or right. With their unusual glazed tops and stepped shelves, it is conceivable that the model may have been designed for a conservatory. One cabinet (with left-facing leopard) formed part of the collection at Chequers, the Tudor house that has served as the country residence for British Prime Ministers since 1921. It is shown in situ in a 1917 photograph of the White Parlour (see H. A. Tipping, English Homes, period III, vol. I, London, 1922, p. 60) and is also illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., 1954, vol. I, p. 201, fig. 77. The probable pair to this (right-facing leopard) was in the possession of the fashionable decorators/dealers Lenygon & Morant as illustrated in the 1924 issue of the Dictionary (vol. I, p. 179, fig. 52). The Chequers photograph dates from the time of Lord and Lady Lee of Fareham, who acquired Chequers in 1912 and gifted it to the nation in 1917. Viscount Lee of Fareham was a patron of the arts and known to Lenygon & Morant which underscores that Lenygon supplied or even produced this model for their clients. The firm was known to both alter and produce copies of period prototypes. A further identical cabinet (right-facing leopard) using the same timber sources (but dated circa 1810) was sold anonymously, Sotheby's, London, 29 November 2000, lot 59.
The leopard crest may be that of the Harvey family including the Hervey branch, Marquesses of Bristol at Ickworth in Suffolk. The 1st Marquess and 5th Earl of Bristol (d. 1859) aggrandized Ickworth building the East wing from 1825 when cabinet-makers Stephen Taprell and William Holland appear in the records (1826-27) while Banting and France (active 1813-40) also name Lord Bristol as a client. Perhaps a cabinet at Ickworth provided a prototype for these later copies?
Other identical cabinets display the same heraldic crest of a leopard facing either left or right. With their unusual glazed tops and stepped shelves, it is conceivable that the model may have been designed for a conservatory. One cabinet (with left-facing leopard) formed part of the collection at Chequers, the Tudor house that has served as the country residence for British Prime Ministers since 1921. It is shown in situ in a 1917 photograph of the White Parlour (see H. A. Tipping, English Homes, period III, vol. I, London, 1922, p. 60) and is also illustrated in R. Edwards and P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., 1954, vol. I, p. 201, fig. 77. The probable pair to this (right-facing leopard) was in the possession of the fashionable decorators/dealers Lenygon & Morant as illustrated in the 1924 issue of the Dictionary (vol. I, p. 179, fig. 52). The Chequers photograph dates from the time of Lord and Lady Lee of Fareham, who acquired Chequers in 1912 and gifted it to the nation in 1917. Viscount Lee of Fareham was a patron of the arts and known to Lenygon & Morant which underscores that Lenygon supplied or even produced this model for their clients. The firm was known to both alter and produce copies of period prototypes. A further identical cabinet (right-facing leopard) using the same timber sources (but dated circa 1810) was sold anonymously, Sotheby's, London, 29 November 2000, lot 59.
The leopard crest may be that of the Harvey family including the Hervey branch, Marquesses of Bristol at Ickworth in Suffolk. The 1st Marquess and 5th Earl of Bristol (d. 1859) aggrandized Ickworth building the East wing from 1825 when cabinet-makers Stephen Taprell and William Holland appear in the records (1826-27) while Banting and France (active 1813-40) also name Lord Bristol as a client. Perhaps a cabinet at Ickworth provided a prototype for these later copies?