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Lot Essay
These impressive tables originally furnished the magnificent interiors created for Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry at Holdernesse House (later Londonderry House) on Park Lane, London, during the 1820s. He served as British ambassador to the Viennese court from 1815 until his inheritance of the Marquisate of Londonderry from his half-brother, the 2nd Marquess and famed Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh in 1822. Londonderry had a great deal of money at his disposal following is marriage in 1819 to the great heiress Frances Anne Vane Tempest; a union which would finance his insatiable appetite for the purchase of works of art, as well as the construction of grand houses in which to display them. He amassed a great collection during his time in Vienna, which almost certainly included these table tops and the important Roman agate and hardstone inlaid marble table top attributed to Giacomo Raffaelli (1753-1836), which is to be included in The Exceptional Sale, Christie’s London, 10 July, 2014. This pair of table tops has much in common with the Raffaelli top, displaying some of the same rare specimen stones, similarly inlaid in discs, and set into white marble of the same gauge. These similarities further support the theory that the three were acquired together, and it is undoubtedly these similarities that led the group generally to be displayed together, as shown in the photograph of the yellow drawing room at Londonderry House taken for Country Life in 1937 (illustrated), and suggested by the Holdernesse House/Londonderry House inventories.
The scale and importance of the collection Londonderry assembled whilst in Vienna is hinted at by the colossal £40,000 of insurance he took to cover the shipment of his chattels from Trieste to London when he vacated the embassy in 1822 (DRO/Lo/F 433). This shipment would likely have contained a great many precious works of art, such as the legendary Londonderry ambassadorial plate, the ‘Boulle’ bureau plat (lot 445 in this sale) and the important old master paintings Londonderry bought from Caroline Murat, the deposed Queen of Naples (thirteen of which including works by Titian and Raffaelle he would go on to sell at Christie’s, Pall Mall, on 12 July 1823 as reported by The Times). The latter information is, perhaps, the most pertinent to the present lot as Raffaelli’s masterpiece was commissioned by Murat’s brother, Napoleon, raising the tantalizing possibility that the Raffaelli table top, and by extension these table tops, could have also been acquired from the collection of the deposed queen.
Lord Londonderry purchased Holdernesse House shortly after his marriage in 1819. During the 1820s it was extensively remodeled by the leading architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt (1775-1850), annexing a neighbouring house to create the palatial interiors for which it would become so well known. The surviving accounts dated 1820-1840 for Wynyard Park, County Durham (Londonderry’s even grander country house), list the names of several important London cabinet makers, most notably Gillows, Morant and Dowbiggin. It is likely that the same London cabinet makers would have also provided the principal furnishings for Holdernesse House. This theory is supported by the survival of Gillows designs for a desk and superstructure for Lord Londonderry dated 7 August 1823 (Gillows Estimate Sketch Book nos. 3266 and 3267) where one design is annotated ‘locks to be changed in London’ suggesting Holdernesse as the desk’s intended destination.
Thomas Dowbiggin (1788-1854) of Mount Street is, perhaps, the most likely candidate for the production of these table bases. The accounts record payments of £1,411.1s.11d. to ‘Dowbiggin & Co – Upholsterers’, by far one of the more significant totals quoted in the furnishing accounts. He is known to have supplied much furniture to the Royal Household and interestingly a near identical form of compressed reeded foot appears on Queen Victoria’s throne of 1837, which has long been attributed to Dowbiggin, and again in simpler form to the dining table he supplied for the Waterloo chamber at Windsor Castle. The prospect that some of the original furnishings for Wyatt’s Holdernesse House were supplied by Dowbiggin is likely given the established link between architect and cabinet maker through their work at nearby Apsley House, for Londonderry’s friend, the Duke of Wellington. This link can only further support the possibility of Dowbiggin as potential author, both of these table bases and the lost giltwood base for the Raffaelli table top.
The scale and importance of the collection Londonderry assembled whilst in Vienna is hinted at by the colossal £40,000 of insurance he took to cover the shipment of his chattels from Trieste to London when he vacated the embassy in 1822 (DRO/Lo/F 433). This shipment would likely have contained a great many precious works of art, such as the legendary Londonderry ambassadorial plate, the ‘Boulle’ bureau plat (lot 445 in this sale) and the important old master paintings Londonderry bought from Caroline Murat, the deposed Queen of Naples (thirteen of which including works by Titian and Raffaelle he would go on to sell at Christie’s, Pall Mall, on 12 July 1823 as reported by The Times). The latter information is, perhaps, the most pertinent to the present lot as Raffaelli’s masterpiece was commissioned by Murat’s brother, Napoleon, raising the tantalizing possibility that the Raffaelli table top, and by extension these table tops, could have also been acquired from the collection of the deposed queen.
Lord Londonderry purchased Holdernesse House shortly after his marriage in 1819. During the 1820s it was extensively remodeled by the leading architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt (1775-1850), annexing a neighbouring house to create the palatial interiors for which it would become so well known. The surviving accounts dated 1820-1840 for Wynyard Park, County Durham (Londonderry’s even grander country house), list the names of several important London cabinet makers, most notably Gillows, Morant and Dowbiggin. It is likely that the same London cabinet makers would have also provided the principal furnishings for Holdernesse House. This theory is supported by the survival of Gillows designs for a desk and superstructure for Lord Londonderry dated 7 August 1823 (Gillows Estimate Sketch Book nos. 3266 and 3267) where one design is annotated ‘locks to be changed in London’ suggesting Holdernesse as the desk’s intended destination.
Thomas Dowbiggin (1788-1854) of Mount Street is, perhaps, the most likely candidate for the production of these table bases. The accounts record payments of £1,411.1s.11d. to ‘Dowbiggin & Co – Upholsterers’, by far one of the more significant totals quoted in the furnishing accounts. He is known to have supplied much furniture to the Royal Household and interestingly a near identical form of compressed reeded foot appears on Queen Victoria’s throne of 1837, which has long been attributed to Dowbiggin, and again in simpler form to the dining table he supplied for the Waterloo chamber at Windsor Castle. The prospect that some of the original furnishings for Wyatt’s Holdernesse House were supplied by Dowbiggin is likely given the established link between architect and cabinet maker through their work at nearby Apsley House, for Londonderry’s friend, the Duke of Wellington. This link can only further support the possibility of Dowbiggin as potential author, both of these table bases and the lost giltwood base for the Raffaelli table top.