ATTRIBUTED TO HENRY CLAY

The table, with Roman medallion top on a 'vase' pillar and tripod 'claw', would have been intended for an 'Etruscan' bedroom apartment, popularised by Robert Adam (d. 1792) and his Works in Architecture, 1774. Japanned around a central medallion vignette, in earthen-red on a black ground after the Grecian Etruscan vase manner, its ornament derives in particular from Pierre-François-Hugues d'’Hancarville's publication of Sir William Hamilton's, Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Naples, 1766-67. Bordered in ivory white Grecian palms, it relates to a Pembroke table supplied in the mid-1770s for Robert Child's state dressing-room at Osterley Park, Middlesex by the Birmingham japanning and papier-mâché manufactory of Henry Clay (d. 1812), following the opening of his London premises in Covent Garden in 1772. He specialised, according to a visitor in 1775, in wares in 'black with orange figures in the style of Etruscan vases' (see M. Tomlin, Catalogue of Adam Period Furniture, London, 1982, j/5).