AN ANGLO-INDIAN IVORY-INLAID ROSEWOOD TABLE BUREAU ON STAND

Table bureaus were particularly popular in the eighteenth century, and were eventually copied in the East for the Western market, most notably in rich ivory-inlay, as in the present lot. However this form with its 'gothick' stand appears to be less commonplace. A similar table bureau, in the collection of Sir Edward Knatchbull of Mersham-le-Hatch, Kent was mounted on a 'very neat new stand' by Thomas Chippendale in 1767 (see P. K. Thornton, 'The Furnishing of Mersham le Hatch I & II', Apollo, April 1970, pp. 266-77, and June 1970, pp. 440-51 reference in C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, 1978, p. 221). The Mersham-le-Hatch example is illustrated in A. Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, 2001, fig. 86.