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Lot Essay
This glittering gold-veneered table typifies the 18th century 'Roman' furnishings introduced by the court cabinet-maker James Moore (d. 1726) at palatial mansions such as Hampton Court Palace and Stowe, Buckinghamshire.
Like the burnished bronze altars and furniture of the Roman and Renaissance periods, its top is finely sculpted with light-catching bas-reliefs on a pounced and matted ground, while its ornamental filigree derives from the French 'Louis Quatorze' or 'antique' fashion popularised by the engravings for goldsmiths, upholsterers and carvers issued by Daniel Marot (d.1752), the court 'architect' to William III. In place of an armorial badge or cypher, it displays Apollo's sunflower badge wreathed in mosaiced compartments of beribboned Roman foliage; while Venus's head graces the reed-gadrooned frame. The nature-deity, framed in a flower-trellised medallion, is tied to the altar-frame by shell-enriched ribbons, while the angles display heads of the satyr companions of the Arcadian fertility-deity Pan. These festive figures serve to evoke lyric poetry and Ovid's Metamorphoses concerning the 'Loves of the Gods'.
The table would no doubt have accompanied a 'pier-set' mirror, such as the 'Glass frame...finely done with carved and gilt work' that Moore supplied, in partnership with the glass-manufacturer John Gumley for Prince Frederick's Hampton Court Drawing Room in 1714/15. This mirror, displaying a similar diadem-crowned Venus together with the feathered badge of the Prince of Wales, is illustrated in Ralph Edwards and Margaret Jourdain's Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, fig. 17.
This table was possibly bought from Moss Harris as it is one of four additional items pencilled into the 1928 Inventory carried out by Law, Foulsham & Cole, Ltd. and listed in the Drawing Room in 1949. One of these items is crossed out and inscribed in ink 'Returned Harris'.
Like the burnished bronze altars and furniture of the Roman and Renaissance periods, its top is finely sculpted with light-catching bas-reliefs on a pounced and matted ground, while its ornamental filigree derives from the French 'Louis Quatorze' or 'antique' fashion popularised by the engravings for goldsmiths, upholsterers and carvers issued by Daniel Marot (d.1752), the court 'architect' to William III. In place of an armorial badge or cypher, it displays Apollo's sunflower badge wreathed in mosaiced compartments of beribboned Roman foliage; while Venus's head graces the reed-gadrooned frame. The nature-deity, framed in a flower-trellised medallion, is tied to the altar-frame by shell-enriched ribbons, while the angles display heads of the satyr companions of the Arcadian fertility-deity Pan. These festive figures serve to evoke lyric poetry and Ovid's Metamorphoses concerning the 'Loves of the Gods'.
The table would no doubt have accompanied a 'pier-set' mirror, such as the 'Glass frame...finely done with carved and gilt work' that Moore supplied, in partnership with the glass-manufacturer John Gumley for Prince Frederick's Hampton Court Drawing Room in 1714/15. This mirror, displaying a similar diadem-crowned Venus together with the feathered badge of the Prince of Wales, is illustrated in Ralph Edwards and Margaret Jourdain's Georgian Cabinet-Makers, London, 1955, fig. 17.
This table was possibly bought from Moss Harris as it is one of four additional items pencilled into the 1928 Inventory carried out by Law, Foulsham & Cole, Ltd. and listed in the Drawing Room in 1949. One of these items is crossed out and inscribed in ink 'Returned Harris'.