A REGENCY BRASS LINE-INLAID YEW-WOOD AND EBONISED CENTRE TABLE

This 'Roman' centre table probably forms part of the Regency refurbishment at Harewood House, Yorkshire, on the instructions of Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles (1764-1814).

THOMAS HOPE (1769-1831) AND CHARLES HEATHCOTE TATHAM (1772-1842)

The design, derived from a Roman prototype, relates to a ‘Folding-stool’ with ram’s head masks in Thomas Hope’s (1769-1831) Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807); in this publication, he illustrated furniture and decorative arts from his fashionable London mansion/museum in Duchess Street (1). In recent times, Hope has been described as ‘the high priest of the purely antiquarian side of Regency design’, and his eclectic and wide-ranging use of animal monopodia in his designs, including winged lions, sphinxes, swans etc., was undoubtedly influential (2). Four years earlier, Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) included a similar design for a ‘Library Table’ in the ‘antique style’, but with winged lion rather than ram's head monopodia, in his Cabinet Dictionary (1803), plate 55. Evidently, both Sheraton and Hope were looking to publications such as Piranesi’s Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi (1778) for inspiration. In fact, Piranesi was just one of a number of architects/designers that Hope credited under ‘A List of the different Works which have been most use to me’ in Household Furniture. Hope unquestionably knew Tatham having probably first met him in Rome in the mid-1790s during a buying trip for antique sculpture (3). Furthermore, the discovery in 2003 of eleven drawings for the new gallery and library at Hope’s Duchess Street, signed and dated ‘C.H. Tatham. Archt. June 1799’, shows that Hope employed Tatham as executant architect (4). Hope subsequently suppressed Tatham’s name so that he would be identified as the sole architect of Duchess Street, and, presumably, for similar reasons excluded Tatham’s influential Etchings from his list of books of most use in the compilation of Household Furniture - although undoubtedly this was Hope's most significant source book.

MARSH & TATHAM

A rosewood and ebony writing-table from the collection of Henry Philip Hope (1774-1839), brother to Thomas, at 3 Seamore Place, has very similar carved ram's masks, almost certainly supplied by a specialist carver. It is, therefore, of interest to note that Thomas Hope promoted the Flemish-born carver Peter Bogaert (d. 1819) of Tottenham Court Road for his own furnishings at Duchess Street, and Bogaert was in turn patronised at Carlton House by George, Prince of Wales in 1809 - a commission during which the Regency cabinet-makers, Marsh & Tatham, who may have made this table, were active (5).

A related table on winged-lion monopodia supports, and described as similar to a design by Tatham, is illustrated in C. Musgrave, Regency Furniture: 1800 to 1830, London, 1961, no. 4A. Another comparable table is in E.T. Joy, English Furniture 1800-1851, London, p. 50. Other stylized animal-monopodia are found on a pair of giltwood couches, made by Gillow, London, for Colonel Hughes for the drawing room at Kinmel Park, Denbighshire (6). The Kinmel Park couches feature a distinctive band of carved triangles above the paw feet that is also found below the ram’s head masks of the present table.

(1) A mahogany stool of this model is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery (R. Fastnedge, Sheraton Furniture, London, 1962, no. 23), and an ebonized and gilded version is illustrated in F. Collard, Regency Furniture, Woodbridge, 1985, p. 98.
(2) E.H. Pinto, ‘The Animals under the table’, Country life Annual, 1972, p. 42.
(3) D. Watkin, ‘Thomas Hope’s house in Duchess Street’, Apollo, March 2004, p. 34.
(4) Ibid., pp. 31-39.
(5) Sold Christie's, London, 3 July 1997, lot 60 (£221,500 inc. premium).
(6) One sold Thomas Upcher, Esq., Sheringham Hall, Norfolk; Christie’s, London, 22 October 1986, lot 151, the other at the Victoria and Albert Museum.