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This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2002 Jun 04 @ 11:00UTC-08:00 : PST/AKDT
A GEORGE II GILT-BRONZE AND LACQUERED BRASS AND ENGRAVED AND LACQUERED BRASS-INLAID MAHOGANY AND EBONY SECRETAIRE-BOOKCASE By Giles Grendey and bearing his trade label, circa 1740 Inlaid overall with engraved foliate and brass lines, the rectangular cornice centered by an arched mirror below a triangular pediment above a cartouche-panelled sliding door with mirror plate flanked on each side by a pair of stop-fluted composite pilasters, enclosing three sliding shelves to each side, each side with a pair of conforming pilasters, the lower section with a hinged slope panelled door enclosing four pigeon-holes behind which are concealed six further small drawers, the interior fitments contained in three removable sections, above a pair of bowfronted serpentine panelled doors enclosing four graduated mahogany-lined drawers, the sides with foliage and mask carrying handles above a conforming panel, the canted angles with entwined flowers and foliage, on pierced C-scrolls, acanthus and dragon bracket feet 1151/4 X 65 X 301/4 in. 293 X 165 X 77 cm - $600,000-700,000. Provenance Christie's London, 8 July 1999, lot 140 This masterpiece of early Georgian cabinet-making is conceived in the Franco/Romano fashion and bears the label of Giles Grendey, the Clerkenwell cabinet-maker and timber merchant celebrated during George II's reign as 'a great Dealer in the Cabinet Way'. In particular, its beautiful figured mahogany, embellished with fine carving and brass enrichments, relates to the quality of 'rich and curious [fine wrought] workmanship' for which he was already noted in 1731. He is recorded as manufacturing large quantities of furniture for export, and amongst his labelled furniture recorded in Europe is a collection of bureau-cabinets and seat furniture that he sent to Spain (C. Gilbert, Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1966, fig. 477). Throughout George II's reign, he played a leading role in the London Joiner's Company and was elected its Master in 1766, at a time that his son-in-law, John Cobb, held the court appointment as cabinet-maker to George III.- THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND ORNAMENTATION The book-cabinet's magnificent architecture, triumphantly pillared and crowned by a triangular pediment, reflects that of the Rome-trained architect James Gibbs (d. 1754). Gibbs, who is celebrated as the Tory architect, was the author of A Book of Architecture, 1728, whose reissue in parts in 1739 was around the time that this cabinet is likely to have been manufactured. Its 'triumphal-arch' façade is of 'Venetian window' form with a mirrored recess framed by paired pilasters, and the latter with their rounded frieze entablature are repeated at the sides. They are of the Composite order, combining that of the Ionic and Corinthian, and this was then generally known as the 'Roman' order. Their pattern is provided in a 1739 engraving issued in Batty Langley, The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740, pl. XIV. The bureau cabinet is brass enriched after the French fashion including 'boulle' inlays of golden Roman foliage and beribboned mosaic compartments; while the bureau and its commode have cut-corners picturesquely festooned with flowered and antique-fretted Roman foliage. The commode's gracefully bowed front and sides is serpentine-paneled like the mirror frame. THE SYMBOLISM AND ITS SOURCES Being intended to decorate the bedchamber of an apartment, in the stately French fashion, its ornament alludes to Venus, nature deity and goddess of love. Her triumphal dolphin-drawn chariot is recalled by reed-enriched acanthus cartouches, that conceal the castors and display the deity's enbowed dolphins, with bifurcated tails. The golden acanthus cartouches that form the handles are also inhabited by shell-crowned bacchic lions and festive feather-dressed nymphs. Even the commode doors, with their acanthus-flowered and ribbon-fret 'lozenge' compartments, allude to the embellishment of Rome's Temple of Venus. Likewise, the bureau interior is similarly decorated and the door of its central tabernacle is inlaid with a lozenged ribbon compartment. This is incorporated in a rusticated triumphal-screen of composite pilaster flanked Its architecture, in particular recalls that of Gibbs's St. Mary-le-Strand as illustrated in his Book of Architecture, pl. 21. The style of the richly-wrought handles as well as the rocaille carvings, with their embossed pearl cartouches, are indebted to the 1730'S inventions of Jacques de Lajoue (d. 1761), Louis XV's Peintre ordinaire. His Livres de cartouches and Tableaux d'ornaments et rocailles, were published in London by Gabriel Huquier (d. 1772) while others featured in Edward Hoppus's The Gentleman and Builder's Repository, 1737. Indeed the bureau-cabinet's mixture of Roman architecture after Inigo Jones (d. 1652) combined with 18th century Franco/Roman ornaments reflects the 'modern' style of 1739 promoted by Batty Langley's furniture pattern book noted above. THE GRENDEY BUREAU-CABINET AND RELATED FURNITURE The discovery of this cabinet is an important addition to the group of brass-inlaid furniture, that was formerly attributed to the firm of John Channon (d. 1779). Channon opened a St. Martin's Lane established in 1737 and three years later labeled a pair of bookcases that were supplied for Powderham Castle, Devon (C. Gilbert and T. Murdock, John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760, London, 1993, pgs. 106-113). Amongst those working in this manner in London during the 1730's was the celebrated Neuweid cabinet maker Abraham Roentgen, who was involved in the production of 'mechanical devices' as well as the 'engravings' of furniture. Among the related bureau-cabinets, which are of interest, is one dated 1732, and bearing the maker's signature of J. Antrobus. Its galleried cornice is likewise surmounted by a tabernacle arch, while pilasters, similarly antique-fluted and reed-enriched, frame its mirror (see J. Cornforth, Top Brass Toppled, Country Life, 14 April 1994, figs 1 and 2). Similar brass capitals featured on a carved and brass-inlaid medal cabinet (now in the Victoria & Albert Museum) that is illustrated on the trade-sheet published by Thomas Potter, following the 1737 establishment of his Holborn workshops. 1737 was also the year that another related bureau-cabinet (now identified with one also in the Victoria & Albert Musuem) was advertised by another Holborn cabinet-maker, John Renshaw as -'..a very curious desk and bookcase, which is allow'd by the Best and most impartial Judges to far excel any Thing of the Kind that has ever been made, for its beauty, Figure and Structure, which are very extraordinary. It chiefly consists of fine mahogany, embellished with Tortoiseshell, fine Brass Moldings and ornaments, with Palasters [sic] curiously wrought after the Corinthian Order' (Gilbert, op. cit. pp. 18, 19 and 61). The spectacular Grendy bureau-cabinet clearly surpassed Renshaw's 'very curious desk and bookcase' and is likely to have been executed soon afterwards. James Lomax of Temple Newsam, in a recent lecture on Grendey at the Victoria & Albert Museum, made analogies between this cabinet and the Murray cabinet by John Channon. He dwelt on the astonishing quality of the brass work on this cabinet and its 'marvelously elegant banding' and went on to remind his audience of the European, particularly German, parallels to this kind of workmanship. He continued, "Although this piece of furniture is obviously the work of several different specialist craftsmen (carvers, glass cutters and polishers, cabinet-makers and the brass inlayer), it must surely all have been supervised by a single master.The name that immediately comes to mind is Abraham Roentgen. He is known to have been in London for five years from 1733 to 1738, working, among others, for William Gomm just across the road from Grendey also in St. John's Square in Clerkenwell. We also know from his grandson's memoirs that he was engaged in engraving, making mosaic in wood and producing mechanical devices and that his work was sought after 'by the most expert masters'. Helena Hayward and Sarah Medlam considered that this 'mosaic in wood' probably referred to brass inlay, a modern development of Boulle decoration, which Roentgen continued to employ on his return to Germany. This is confirmed by Roentgen's close association and collaboration with a fellow Moravian Frederick Hintz who is, of course, known from his advertisement in the Daily Post of 22 May 1738 to have specialized in precisely this technique. The evidence is quite compelling. Actually, it was Abraham Roentgen's grandson who wrote this about his grandfather's time in London many years later in the 19th century. He said it was a Mr. Gern with whom he had worked in St. John's Square Clerkenwell. Lindsay Boynton first suggested that this was William Gomm (in his article in the Burlington Magazine in 1980). But one wonders whether this was a poor transcription, or the recollection of a garbled half forgotten name; 'Gern' can very easily be transcribed as 'Gren' and even be an abbreviated form of 'Grendey', who as we know had his premises in St. John's Square. It is not hard to imagine the sprightly young craftsmen of cockney Clerkenwell referring to Mr. Gren. 'At all events, it must surely have been a bespoke piece, and one seriously wonders whether the report of the destruction of an easy chair worth £500 and intended for a German prince at the time of the fire was correct. Perhaps this piece was a cabinet worth £500 and it was not destroyed and this is the present lot. One could speculate even further, with Giles Ellwood, that all these foreign, not to say Germanic, features in Grendey's production points to the idea that the identity of this person is Herr Grundig rather than a Mr. Grendey. Careful examination during the cleaning of the cabinet revealed the form and angle of the original pediment, which has now been restored.
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Tuesday May 28 10:00AM to 5:00PM;Wednesday May 29 10:00AM to 5:00PM;Thursday May 30 10:00AM to 5:00PM;Friday May 31 10:00AM to 5:00PM;Saturday June 1 10:00AM to 5:00PM;Sunday June 2 1:00PM to 5:00PM; Monday June 3 10:00AM to 5:00PM
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