A CLASSICAL BRASS-INLAID ROSEWOOD ORMOLU-MOUNTED WORK TABLE

Fashioned from costly imported materials, this work table was a luxurious form and a supreme example of Boston’s Classical style. From the lyre-supports to the sabre legs and anthemia mounts, the form contains several references to Antiquity and speaks to the cosmopolitan tastes of Boston’s early nineteenth-century elite. Three other examples feature the same overall model, made of rosewood with octagonal tops, lyre-supports and inlaid and applied brass ornament, and were undoubtedly made in the same shop. One, like the example offered here, has a fully turned stretcher and feet fitted with casters, while the other two illustrate a slight variation with a partly squared stretcher and paw feet (see Sotheby’s, New York, 24-25 January 2014, lot 375, J. Michael Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection (New York, 1986), pp. 202-203, no. 82 and, now at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, that illustrated in Peter Hill, advertisement, The Magazine Antiques (January 1979), p. 131). The example offered here is the only one of the four with front canted corners embellished with mounts in the form of bees, possibly referring to the Barberini family of Renaissance Rome or more recently, Napoleon’s rule in France.