Apter-Fredericks

Important 18th & 19th Century Antique Furniture

Satinwood

A George III Satinwood Console Table
A Fine and Rare George III Satinwood & Marquetry Bonheur du Jour
A Regency Period Rosewood & Parcel-Gilt Side-Cabinet
A George III Sheraton Period Oval Tray
A George III Satinwood Drum Table
A George III Satinwood, Harewood, Burr-Yew and Marquetry Breakfront Bookcase Attributed to Mayhew & Ince
A George III Parcel-Gilt and Painted Satinwood Pier Table
A George III Satinwood Bonhuer du Jour in the Manner of George Simson
An Exceptional Eighteenth Century Dutch Centre Table
A Rare Pair of George III Sheraton Period Satinwood Pole Screens
A George III Satinwood and Decorated Bookcase
A Pair of George III Adam Period Rosewood Semi-Elliptical Console Tables
A George III Sycamore, Tulipwood Rosewood and Marquetry Pembroke Table
A Fine Pair of George III Satinwood Card Tables
A George III Satinwood "Harlequin" Pembroke Table in the Manner of Henry Kettle
A George III Period Personal Weighing Machine or 'Sanctorius's Balance'
A George III Rolled Paperwork Box, decorated by Mary Earnshaw of Wakefield in 1795
A Pair of George III Period Satinwood, Decorated and Parcel-Gilt Side Tables
A Fine Pair of Harewood And Inlaid Side Tables by William Gates
An Important Regency Mahogany Sideboard With a Pair of Pedestals en Suite. Attributed to George Oakley
A George III Parcel-Gilt and Painted Satinwood Pier Table (detail)

A George III Parcel-Gilt and Painted Satinwood Pier Table

Height: 2'11" 90cm
Width: 5' 8" 174cm
Depth: 24" 62cm

The semi-elliptical table features a superbly decorated satinwood top above a similarly decorated frieze. The top is veneered in satinwood and painted with naturalistic flower swags bordered by a detailed guilloche pattern. The frieze is hung with flower sprays and centered by Cupid's arrows gathered in a quiver and ribbon-tied with the flaming torch of Hymenaios (the Roman god of marriage), symbolizing the union of love and marriage. The table is supported on four stop-fluted gilt-wood legs.

The quality and originality of the decoration is exceptional and the colour of the satinwood has transformed over time and has a lustrous quality rarely seen.

English, Circa 1785

Bantry House, County Cork, Ireland

This satinwood table reflects a time when the court of George III (d.1820) was seeking to combine the Roman taste popularized in England by Robert Adam with that of the French court of Louis XVI (d.1793). The flower swags featured on the top of the table closely relate to a design for a Gobelins tapestry commissioned in 1772 to decorate the so-called Tapestry Room in the State Apartment at Osterley Park, Middlesex.

From the end of the 1770s the taste for painted decoration grew with Émigré painters having considerable influence, particularly in the use of design motifs originating from continental Europe. Apart from its aesthetic introduction of colour, painted decoration does not fade and proved to be a more cost effective method of decoration than marquetry.

The present table relates to other examples of furniture featuring very similar painted decoration with swags of ribbon-tied flowers against a satinwood reserve. This includes a pair of pier tables in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Merseyside (see Percy MacQuoid, The Leverhulme Art Collections, 1928, vol. III, No. 377 pl. 94) and a semi-circular table that was part of a group of furniture supplied to Lord Howard de Walden by the firm of Chipcase & Lambert between 1768 and 1786 for Audley End, Suffolk (see Ralph Edwards and Percy MacQuoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 1954 rev. ad., 3 vols., vol. Ill, p. 300, fig. 75).