.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This elaborate card table exhibits many elements of high-style New York furniture including figurative carving, parcel-gilt elements and brass banding. While previously attributed to Charles-Honoré Lannuier, it has been determined that the stamps on this table are spurious. The estampille was believed to have been applied to tables with rounded corners like those of the subject table (Peter M. Kenny, Honoré Lannuier: Cabinetmaker from Paris (New York, 1998), p. 154). These corners are not featured on any documented tables by Lannuier; however, they were often used by Duncan Phyfe, who started incorporating rounded corners around 1820 (Peter M. Kenny and Michael K. Brown, Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York (New York, 2011), p. 85). The subject card table also exhibits hocked feet often associated with Phyfe and has unique gilded acanthus leaves on the feet that “billow upward from the crease and engage the… plinth, terminating in a sprightly outward flip” (Kenny and Brown, op. cit., p. 206).
For a similar example attributed to Phyfe with swan and lyre carving and rounded corners see Peter M. Kenny, "Opulence Abroad: Charles-Honoré Lannuier’s Gilded Furniture in Trinidad de Cuba," American Furniture 2004, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2004), p. 252, fig. 17. Attributes of both Venus and Apollo, the swan and lyre motifs were derived from sources from antiquity and particularly favored by New York cabinetmakers during the early nineteenth century (Wendy Cooper, Classical Taste in America (New York, 1993), p. 142).
For a similar example attributed to Phyfe with swan and lyre carving and rounded corners see Peter M. Kenny, "Opulence Abroad: Charles-Honoré Lannuier’s Gilded Furniture in Trinidad de Cuba," American Furniture 2004, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2004), p. 252, fig. 17. Attributes of both Venus and Apollo, the swan and lyre motifs were derived from sources from antiquity and particularly favored by New York cabinetmakers during the early nineteenth century (Wendy Cooper, Classical Taste in America (New York, 1993), p. 142).
