LATE 18TH CENTURY

This pair of architectural stands was almost certainly inspired by Goût grec designs for athenienne as illustrated in Joseph-Marie Vien’s La Vertueuse Athénienne (1762), disseminated through an engraving by P. Filipart in 1765 (A. Coleridge, ‘English furniture supplied for Croome Court: Robert Adam and the 6th Earl of Coventry’, Apollo, February 2000, p. 10, fig. 5). The athenienne was featured in French prints from at least the early 18th century; a detail from an engraving of circa 1709 by Chevallier of an imaginary architectural setting by Oppenord of the Girardon gallery at the Louvre shows an athenienne on a related tripod stand with rams heads, swags, acanthus, and scrolled supports (D. Watkin, Athenian Stuart: Pioneer of the Greek Revival, London, 1982, fig. 24). The form was reinterpreted by William Chambers, Robert Adam, and James ‘Athenian’ Stuart as tripod stands, torchères, perfume burners and side tables. In 1762, the aesthetic severity of the ‘Greek style’ partially superseded that of Roman neoclassicism in England with the publication of The Antiquities of Athens by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and Nicholas Revett. Although a maker cannot, at present, be identified, the quality of the carving, in particular the goat heads, suggests a superior craftsman, and while atypical of the work of Mayhew & Ince, the fluidity of the carved drapery recalls that found on a sideboard and pier table possibly supplied by the cabinetmakers to Lord Kerry in circa 1770, and now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery (C. Cator, ‘The Earl of Kerry and Mayhew and Ince: ‘The Idlest Ostentation’, Furniture History, 1990, p. 32, figs. 1 and 2).