A GEORGE III TULIPWOOD-CROSSBANDED, HAREWOOD, INDIAN ROSEWOOD AND FRUITWOOD MARQUETRY PEMBROKE TABLE

There are many signature features to this distinguished table linking it firmly to the workshop of Britain's most celebrated cabinet-maker, Thomas Chippendale. Produced when Chippendale was engaged on his most famed commission, the furnishing of Harewood House, Yorkshire, for Edwin Lascelles, later 1st Baron Harewood, the marquetry has much in common with that supplied for Harewood. The most distinctive feature of the design, is, perhaps, the central medallion to the top which is a key part of Chippendale's design vocabulary, and which he employs repeatedly throughout the neoclassical high point of his career.

The Palmyrene 'sunflower' medallion appears both in marquetry, as here, and as a carved patera to mahogany, gilt and painted furniture. It is used to most striking effect to the centre of the top of Chippendale's acknowledged masterpiece, the 'Minerva' commode supplied in 1773 to Harewood House, see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, vol. II, London, 1978, fig. 232. The medallion is also found incorporated into a design for a garden seat in a drawing from Chippendale's workshop, attributed to Thomas Chippendale Junior of circa 1774, which survives in the Harewood archives and is illustrated in J. Goodison, The Life & Work of Thomas Chippendale Junior, London & New York, 2017, fig. 290. A further closely related Pembroke table of the same angular but with less distinctive marquetry, made for the tapestry room at Newby Hall, another of Chippendale's celebrated Yorkshire commissions, is illustrated in Gilbert op. cit. pl 459. Another closely related Pembroke table firmly attributed to Chippendale, also employing the same distinctive medallion to the centre of the top and each of the leaves, was sold, Christie's, London, 8 February 1996, lot 144.