Apter-Fredericks

Important 18th & 19th Century Antique Furniture

Ince

A George III Satinwood, Harewood, Burr-Yew and Marquetry Breakfront Bookcase Attributed to Mayhew & Ince
The Hinton House Commodes Attributed to Ince & Mayhew
A George III Oval Carved Giltwood Wall Mirror
A George III Sycamore, Tulipwood Rosewood and Marquetry Pembroke Table
A George III Mahogany Card Table in the Manner of Ince & Mayhew

WILLIAM INCE & JOHN MAYHEW

Partners in business from 1759 until 1804 and probably the longest partnership known. In 1763, they published The Universal System of Household Furniture, dedicating it to the Duke of Marlborough. It contained around 300 designs, some of which followed the fashions established by Chippendale.

A George III Satinwood, Harewood, Burr-Yew and Marquetry Breakfront Bookcase Attributed to Mayhew & Ince


A George III Satinwood, Harewood, Burr-Yew and Marquetry Breakfront Bookcase Attributed to Mayhew & Ince

Height: 100" 254cm
Width: 81 ½" 207cm
Depth: 24" 61cm

Cross-banded in tulipwood, the moulded and dentil cornice with an arched central pediment inlaid with Erato and ribbon-tied swags above a frieze with simulated stop-fluting and roundels. Below, are four cross-banded and astragal glazed doors to the cabinet section and four solid doors inlaid with husk- wreathed oval panels to the base.

English, Circa 1770

Christopher Tower (d. 1810), Weald Hall, Brentwood, Essex and by descent.
The bookcase is inscribed in pencil with the family name 'Tower' and is likely to have been commissioned by Christopher Tower (d.1810) for his wife Elizabeth (née Baker of Elmore Hall, Durham) at the time of his inheritance in 1778 of Weald Hall, Essex. The bookcase was offered in the Alfred Savill & Sons house sale, Weald Hall, 1-13 July 1946, lot 431 and retained by the family following the sale.

The satinwood bookcase displays a number of features closely associated with the Golden Square, Soho, partnership of Messrs Mayhew and Ince. The same Muse image features in a painted medallion embellishing a tambour writing-table that was formerly at Durdans, Epsom (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, p. 229, fig. 215) and Mayhew and Ince also favoured the use of richly figured yew veneer, such as feature on a bureau-writing-table at Burghley, Lincolnshire.

Its glazing pattern was invented and engraved in 1753 by the St. Martin's Lane cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (d.1779) and featured in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, whose third and final edition of 1762 displayed taste at the beginning of George III's reign.

ICONOGRAPHY

The bookcase celebrates lyric-poetry and is designed in the elegant George III Roman fashion of the 1770s. Its triumphal-arched temple pediment, intended to be crowned by sacred urns, has its tympanum labelled with a beribboned medallion of Erato, the lyre-playing Muse of Love Poetry and Mount Parnassus companion of Apollo as leader of Artistic Inspiration.