BY INCE & MAYHEW, CIRCA 1765 - 75

This magnificent `antique’ commode belongs to a group of yew-wood commodes attributed to William Ince and John Mayhew of Broad Street, Soho, London. The idiosyncratic use of yew as a veneer was a leit-motif through more than thirty years of the firm’s work, for example in the Broadlands, Hampshire commission.¹ The combination of ebonised mouldings, 'therm' angles, chandelles and rosettes within chequered line borders is characteristic of the firm's production in the mid 1760s; and in its overall form, it shares many characteristics with the plainer commode probably supplied to Longleat House, Wiltshire, sold Christie’s, 13-14 June 2002, lot 344.

The distinctive and heavily engraved neoclassical marquetry is also characteristic of Ince and Mayhew’s production. Inspired by the publication of recent excavations, the frieze pattern - with its alternating ovals and circles - as well as the two-handled neoclassical vase to the left side - are directly derived from Roland Fréart’s influential study Parallèle de l’architecture antique et de la moderne, of which the partners undoubtedly possessed a copy. By contrast, the large feathered and foliate boss on the top, shaded and heightened with black, is based on the central boss of a temple ceiling, illustrated in Robert Wood’s Palmyra, while the leaping deer within a laurel wreath on the right side is probably based (in reverse) on one of the deer shown in a hunting scene depicted in Le Antichità di Ercolano. The same neoclassical urn (as well as the laurel wreath that encircles it) also featured in marquetry on the pair of profoundly avant-garde commodes supplied by Ince and Mayhew to the Earl of Coventry for Croome Court. Described in the partner’s bill as :-

‘2 very fine Sattinwood & Holly Commodes, Neatly Gravd & Inlaid with Flowers of Rosewood, the one with drawers, the other with Shelves to Slide, Lind with paper & Green Bays falls to do Brass naild’, these were invoiced on 21 September 1765 at £40.

A POSSIBLE PROVENANCE?

Although the original 18th Century provenance of this commode has been lost – it is first recorded in the annals of Basil Dighton in the early 20th Century² – recent research into the partnership of Messrs. Ince and Mayhew has thrown up a tantalising possibility. For in its idiosyncratic design and motifs, the commode appears to correspond to a commode described in the diary of Lady Shelburne in 1765.

Although the payments in Lord Shelburne’s Household Accounts to Messrs. Ince and Mayhew evidently cover only a small part of the commission, fortunately Lady Shelburne’s diary provides some useful insights into the extent and progress of the commission, while also making clear that she took a leading role in the furnishing of both houses. In one such entry for the morning of 14 March 1765, just over a month after her marriage, Lady Shelburne recorded the arrival of a visitor who ‘found us giving Ince the cabinet Maker plans from Herculaneum & Palmyra for ornaments for a Comode of Yew tree wood inlaid with Holly & Ebony’.

The evidence of this diary entry provides both an early record of the firm’s idiosyncratic use of yew-wood – evidently considered worthy of remark by Lady Shelburne – as well as a valuable indication of one of the ways in which the partners were introduced to recent neoclassical design sources. In this case, the references were probably to the celebrated and much-coveted official publication of the discoveries made at Herculaneum and elsewhere, Le Antichità di Ercolano. Le Pitture Antiche d’Ercolano, and – almost certainly – Robert Wood’s ground-breaking and highly influential Ruins of Palmyra, published in 1753.

The intriguing piece of furniture mentioned by Lady Shelburne’s diary is certainly no longer in the Shelburne (now Lansdowne) collection, but it does seem to correspond in significant ways to the commode offered here, and furthermore incorporates designs taken from both books mentioned above.

Much has been published in modern times on the building, decoration and furnishing of both Shelburne House and Bowood, drawing principally on surviving material in the Bowood archives and the Adam drawings in the Soane Museum (see the entry for the Lansdowne Hermes, lot 25 in this sale). However, the identification of items mentioned in surviving accounts for the three furniture-makers principally employed – Thomas Chippendale (for Shelburne House only) from 1768 to 1776, William and John Linnell (for both houses, some to Adam’s designs) from 1763 to 1796, and Ince and Mayhew (for both houses) – is now all but impossible, given the numerous sales that have taken place in the intervening period.

This commode will be included in the forthcoming publication by Hugh Roberts, and Charles Cator, Industry and Ingenuity: The Partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew, 2022. This footnote incorporates an abridged version of their research.

1. H. Roberts, 'Furniture at Broadlands - II', Country Life', 5 February 1981, pp. 346 – 347.
2. Margaret Jourdain, English Decoration and Furniture of the later XVIIIth Century, London and New York 1922, fig. 283