A GEORGE III TULIPWOOD-BANDED, SATINWOOD AND MARQUETRY TEA CADDY

The frond marquetry on this tea caddy can be related to that found on the top of a commode attributed to the partnership of Wiliam Ince (d. 1804) and John Mayhew (d. 1811), now in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery (L. Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London, 1994, p. 195, no. 22). Similar exhuberant carving is also seen on another commode attributed to the firm, supplied to the 4th Duke of Marlborough (H. Roberts, 'Nicely Fitted Up: Furniture for the 4th Duke of Marlborough', Furniture History, vol. 30 (1994), p. 139, fig. 30). The classical urn marquetry can be compared to an urn (with pedestal) supplied by the firm to the Earl of Kerry in about 1770 (C. Cator, 'The Earl of Kerry and Mayhew and Ince: The Idlest Ostentation', Furniture History, vol. 26 (1990), figs. 3-5). Ince & Mayhew referred to the 'tea chest', 'tea box', and 'tea cannister' a number of times as part of their large commission for Lord Kerry, for example, at Twickenham, 'A very Neat Inlaid Teabox with Silver furntiure £7 7s' (H. Roberts, '"Precise and Exact in the Minutest Things of Taste and Decoration": The Earl of Kerry's Patronage of Ince & Mayhew', Furniture History, vol. 49 (2013), p. 35).