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Lot Essay
This table is designed in the manner of the Grinling Gibbons, the celebrated master carver who was born in Rotterdam in 1648 and learnt his craft among the carvers and sculptors of the Quellin workshop before moving to England in 1667, settling first in York and by 1671 in Deptford, London. Gibbons was admitted to the Drapers’ Company in 1672, establishing his business first at Ludgate Hill, and after 1677 in Covent Garden. early in his career he was employed at Holme Lacey House, Herefordshire and at Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire by 1675, and is documented working at Windsor Castle in 1677. In 1682 he was appointed by Charles II as Surveyor and Repairer of Carved Work at Windsor and nominated by the King following the visit of Cosimo (III) de’ Medici to execute a panel to mark the friendship and confirm the alliance between the royal family and the House of Tuscany (the panel now in the Pitti Palace). Numerous commissions followed in Royal palaces including Hampton Court, churches such as St. Paul's Cathedral and St. James’s, Piccadilly, and houses including Petworth in Sussex, Burghley, Northamptonshire, and Blenheim, Oxfordshire.
Gibbons’ style is unmistakable, employing a wide vocabulary of subjects and symbols taken from nature, the arts, music and literature. The table offered here displays several features associated with Gibbons, not least the prominent winged cherub masks similar to those in the Carved Room at Petworth (1692) and Kensington Palace (1694), the drapery, again at Kensington Palace and at Hampton Court (1699) and the swags which incorporate all manner of flowers and fruit such as wheat ears and pea pods and which became almost ubiquitous in his work.
A table made of walnut and limewood was in the collection of John Evelyn and likewise displayed Gibbons’ trademark carving. Evelyn described the table in 1702 as `incomparably carved… by that famous Artist Gibbons, & presented to me in acknowledgement of my first Recommending him to K. Charles the Second, before which he was scarce known’. The table descended in the Evelyn family until it was sold Christie’s, London, 17 March 1977, lot 126.
Related tables with the same distinctive leg pattern include a smaller example with two cherub masks in the frieze, the property of Seymour Lucas Esq, illustrated in P. Macquoid, A History of English Furniture The Age of Walnut, London, 1905, p. 91, fig. 85, and another, perhaps its pair (but retaining its carved feet) formerly at St. Donat’s Castle, Glamorganshire, illustrated in P. Macquoid & R. Edwards, Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1954, vol. III, p. 278, fig. 13. A third, of similar size and design to the present lot with two masks and billing doves to the central apron and further masks to the side aprons, was sold from the Collection of David Style, Wateringbury Place, Christie’s house sale, 31 May-2 June 1978, lot 81.
Gibbons’ style is unmistakable, employing a wide vocabulary of subjects and symbols taken from nature, the arts, music and literature. The table offered here displays several features associated with Gibbons, not least the prominent winged cherub masks similar to those in the Carved Room at Petworth (1692) and Kensington Palace (1694), the drapery, again at Kensington Palace and at Hampton Court (1699) and the swags which incorporate all manner of flowers and fruit such as wheat ears and pea pods and which became almost ubiquitous in his work.
A table made of walnut and limewood was in the collection of John Evelyn and likewise displayed Gibbons’ trademark carving. Evelyn described the table in 1702 as `incomparably carved… by that famous Artist Gibbons, & presented to me in acknowledgement of my first Recommending him to K. Charles the Second, before which he was scarce known’. The table descended in the Evelyn family until it was sold Christie’s, London, 17 March 1977, lot 126.
Related tables with the same distinctive leg pattern include a smaller example with two cherub masks in the frieze, the property of Seymour Lucas Esq, illustrated in P. Macquoid, A History of English Furniture The Age of Walnut, London, 1905, p. 91, fig. 85, and another, perhaps its pair (but retaining its carved feet) formerly at St. Donat’s Castle, Glamorganshire, illustrated in P. Macquoid & R. Edwards, Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1954, vol. III, p. 278, fig. 13. A third, of similar size and design to the present lot with two masks and billing doves to the central apron and further masks to the side aprons, was sold from the Collection of David Style, Wateringbury Place, Christie’s house sale, 31 May-2 June 1978, lot 81.