PROBABLY BY MAYHEW AND INCE, CIRCA 1780

This fine marquetry pier table is likely to by the pre-eminent and fashionable Golden Square cabinet-makers John Mayhew (d.1811) and William Ince (d.1804) based on its stylistic relation to their confirmed works. It is closely comparable to a pier table with the same border to the top,  in the Upstairs Drawing Room at Burton Agnes, East Yorkshire (A. Oswald, ‘Burton Agnes Hall, Yorkshire – III’, Country Life, 18 June 1953, p. 1975, fig. 10). Although Mayhew and Ince are not known to have worked at Burton Agnes, there are at least two other distinctive commodes in the same room, which are undoubtedly by their hand. Furthermore, similar marquetry banding to that found on the frieze of this table is seen on their confirmed works including the celebrated Derby House commode and the Shafto commode from Bavington Hall, Northumberland, and on an urn (together with pedestal) supplied by the firm to Lord Kerry in circa 1770 (C. Cator, ‘The Earl of Kerry and Mayhew and Ince: The Idlest Ostentation’, Furniture History Society, vol. 26, 1990, fig. 3).