A GEORGE IV MAHOGANY DAY BED

Details

A GEORGE IV MAHOGANY DAY BED
The serpentine side rest carved with Greek key pattern to the top with panelled sides, shaped back rest with scrolled terminal and paw support, on reeded patera-headed sabre legs, later brass caps and ceramic castors, one leg with later metal supports, the seat rail stamped 'V R 1872 ROOM 23' below a crown, 'CL', and 'G IV R 60', the shape probably altered, the low end frieze grained
67 in. (170 cm.) long

Provenance

Almost certainly supplied circa 1815 to George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV (d. 1830), for Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park.
By descent at Cumberland Lodge until at least 1872.

Lot Essay

The elliptic-ended Grecian sofa, whose tablet rail displays a black-inlaid Grecian ribbon fret, has its arm supported by a scrolled lion-monopodia as featured on a bed pattern in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Encyclopedia, 1804, pl. 3 of beds. The same pattern was adopted for a round-ended Grecian sofa supplied for George, Prince of Wales's Carlton House in 1807 (E. Joy, English Furniture 1800-1851, London, 1977, p. 34).

The present sofa bears the CL brand of Cumberland Lodge, the name adopted for Windsor Great Lodge during George IV's Regency. It is likely to have formed part of the bedroom furnishings introduced in 1815, when some £2,000 of furnishings were invoiced during the period the prince Regent's architect John Nash was carrying out improvements (J. Roberts, Royal Landscape, London, 1997, p. 333-346.)

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