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Lot Essay
This secrétaire cabinet-on-stand belongs to a group of at least four examples traditionally attributed on stylistic grounds to the Royal cabinet-maker William Vile (c. 1700⁄5-1767). Three of these are discussed by Geoffrey Beard in ‘Vile and Cobb, eighteenth-century London furniture makers’, Magazine Antiques, June 1990, vol. 137, p. 1405, f/n 31. Two secrétaire cabinets were supplied to Robert D’Arcy, 4th Earl of Holderness (1718-1778), Secretary of State to George III, for Hornby Castle, Yorkshire. They are known as the D’Arcy Cabinet and the Hoffman Cabinet. The D’Arcy Cabinet was bequeathed by Lady Holderness to the Hon. Augusta Leigh, Lord Byron’s half-sister, and is cited in a codicil to her Will dated 23 July 1801: ‘I leave to my said granddaughter Augusta Mary Byron my little cabinet with the china within and at top; it stands in my bed chamber next to the chimney’. The cabinet was later sold by the collector Arthur D. Leidesdorf, Sotheby’s, London, 27 June 1974, lot 23 (£29,000), and again as the Property of a Gentleman, Sotheby’s, London, 18 November 1983, lot 60 (£203,500). The Hoffman Cabinet was sold by Mrs. Madeline S. Hoffman, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 12 April 1969, lot 120 ($25,000). A third cabinet in this group, formerly in the collection of Lady Dudley Ward at Dudley House, London, and later with Mallett & Son in 1964, is now in the Noel Terry Collection at Fairfax House, Yorkshire (see P. Brown, The Noel Terry Collection of Furniture & Clocks, York, 1987, pp. 96-97, fig. 96). A fourth cabinet, probably once with Ronald A. Lee and later with Partridge, was offered at Christie’s, New York, 21 October 1999, lot 139, and subsequently at Sotheby’s, New York, 19 April 2021, lot 137. A fifth cabinet-on-stand, formerly in the collection of James Thursby-Pelham, is illustrated in O. Brackett, English Furniture Illustrated, revised ed., London, 1950, p. 203, pl. CLXXV.
MRS. MAE CALDWELL MANWARING PLANT HAYWARD ROVENSKY
Mrs. Plant (née Mae Caldwell, formerly Manwaring, and later Mrs. William Hayward and Mrs. John Rovensky) and her second husband, the American financier Morton F. Plant (1851-1918), were already preparing to move uptown to their new residence at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street when she became captivated by a pair of exceptional natural pearl necklaces at Cartier. Her admiration inspired the now-famous exchange in which Pierre Cartier proposed trading the pearls for the Plants’ former Fifth Avenue mansion at 52nd Street. The final agreement transferred the house, valued at $950,000, in return for the two necklaces, valued at $1.5 million, plus $100. The transaction secured for Cartier the distinguished New York headquarters that remains the firm’s flagship today.
The present cabinet-on-stand was photographed in a corridor of Mrs. Plant’s newly completed mansion at 1051 Fifth Avenue and 86th Street, finished around 1916. She was among the earliest and most important clients of the English-born antiques dealer and decorator Arthur S. Vernay (1877-1960), who supplied much of the furniture and art for her interiors. These rooms were later documented in his 1927 publication Decorations and English Interiors.
After Morton Plant’s death in 1918, Mae, known as “Maisie,” married Colonel William Hayward (1877-1944). Together they acquired Clarendon Court, the former Bellevue Avenue cottage of E. C. Knight in Newport, and in 1930 they opened Casa Louwana in Palm Beach, Florida. Following Hayward’s death in 1944, Maisie married John Edward Rovensky (1880-1970) in 1954 at her Fifth Avenue mansion. She died in Newport two years later, in July 1956. The magnificent furniture, decorative arts, paintings, and jewelry from her Fifth Avenue residence, along with selected pieces from Clarendon Court, were sold in a landmark five-part auction, The Art Collection of the Late Mrs. John E. Rovensky, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 15-19 January 1957.
MRS. MAE CALDWELL MANWARING PLANT HAYWARD ROVENSKY
Mrs. Plant (née Mae Caldwell, formerly Manwaring, and later Mrs. William Hayward and Mrs. John Rovensky) and her second husband, the American financier Morton F. Plant (1851-1918), were already preparing to move uptown to their new residence at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street when she became captivated by a pair of exceptional natural pearl necklaces at Cartier. Her admiration inspired the now-famous exchange in which Pierre Cartier proposed trading the pearls for the Plants’ former Fifth Avenue mansion at 52nd Street. The final agreement transferred the house, valued at $950,000, in return for the two necklaces, valued at $1.5 million, plus $100. The transaction secured for Cartier the distinguished New York headquarters that remains the firm’s flagship today.
The present cabinet-on-stand was photographed in a corridor of Mrs. Plant’s newly completed mansion at 1051 Fifth Avenue and 86th Street, finished around 1916. She was among the earliest and most important clients of the English-born antiques dealer and decorator Arthur S. Vernay (1877-1960), who supplied much of the furniture and art for her interiors. These rooms were later documented in his 1927 publication Decorations and English Interiors.
After Morton Plant’s death in 1918, Mae, known as “Maisie,” married Colonel William Hayward (1877-1944). Together they acquired Clarendon Court, the former Bellevue Avenue cottage of E. C. Knight in Newport, and in 1930 they opened Casa Louwana in Palm Beach, Florida. Following Hayward’s death in 1944, Maisie married John Edward Rovensky (1880-1970) in 1954 at her Fifth Avenue mansion. She died in Newport two years later, in July 1956. The magnificent furniture, decorative arts, paintings, and jewelry from her Fifth Avenue residence, along with selected pieces from Clarendon Court, were sold in a landmark five-part auction, The Art Collection of the Late Mrs. John E. Rovensky, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 15-19 January 1957.