CIRCA 1790

The pier-table frame, designed in the elegant George III Roman fashion of the 1770s, celebrates lyric poetry. Its frieze, comprises a ribbon-guilloche of Cupid's darts amongst antique-flutes, and displays tablets with 'Apollo' sunflowered medallions inspired by the temple ceiling at Palmyra (R. Wood, Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra, 1753). These alternate with bas-relief tablets of sacred palm-wreathed urns, and these project at the cut and hollowed angles above the herm-tapered legs, which are festooned with poetic laurels framed in sunk tablets and enwreathed with 'Venus' pearls in the 'Etruscan' fashion. The urn embellishments reflect the Roman 'columbarium' style introduced in the 1760s by the court architects Sir William Chambers (d. 1796) and Robert Adam (d. 1792), and adopted by the leading cabinet-makers and upholsterers such as Messrs. Mayhew and Ince. In the mid-1770s the latter supplied Blenheim Palace with a mahogany pier-commode-table, which was designed under Chambers' direction with hermed pilasters similarly festooned in laurel that was carved in Etruscan-black ebony (H. Roberts, 'Furniture for the 4th Duke of Marlborough', Furniture History, 1994, pp. 117-149, fig. 26).

A pair of George III mahogany card-tables with closely related carved frieze was sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 28 November 2002, lot 102.