A PAIR OF GEORGE III LACQUERED BRASS-MOUNTED FUSTIC, TULIPWOOD AND MARQUETRY COMMODES

These commodes reflect the neoclassical taste for furniture in England in the 1770s and can be confidently attributed to the cabinet-makers William Ince and John Mayhew. They may have been commissioned by Lord George Augustus Cavendish, second son of the 3rd Duke of Devonshire, who inherited Holker Hall in Cumbria from a Lowther family cousin in 1753 and employed John Carr to make additions to the house in c.1783, or by his nephew Lord George Cavendish, later 1st Earl of Burlington. There are several documented Ince and Mayhew commissions for the Cavendish family from which these commodes may have come from. Lord Burlington’s wife, Lady Elizabeth Compton, is a documented client of the firm, evidenced by correspondence that survives between Lady Elizabeth and Ince and Mayhew which documents furniture ordered for either Compton Place, East Sussex or for Burlington House, Piccadilly. Lord Burlington’s elder brother, the 5th Duke of Devonshire is also a documented client, and these commodes interestingly share some similar decorative motifs with this commission. Holker was then inherited by the 2nd Earl of Burlington, later 7th Duke of Devonshire, who re-built it in Jacobean Revival style, where the commodes appear definitively in his probate inventory, dated April 1892, listed in the Drawing Room as 'Pair 3ft. walnut tulipwood & inlaid marqueterie Cabinets, with shelves & panel doors, ormolu mounted.' As the 7th Duke certainly moved furniture and pictures around between the many Cavendish houses that he inherited with the dukedom in 1858, there is no certainty where these commodes were originally made for. Holker passed in 1891 to his third son Lord Edward Cavendish and on his death in 1901 to his second son Lord Richard Cavendish, by whom the commodes were sold (Christie’s 11 December 1930, lot 45), likely the only time these commodes have been on the market since their creation. From here it entered the collection of Sir Harold and Lady Zia Wernher at Someries House, Regent’s Park. Many labels on these commodes survive which confirm this fascinating provenance as noted above.

The commode’s box-like form, pioneered by Ince and Mayhew in commissions for the Earls of Coventry and Exeter in the 1760s, allows the front and top to be used for the uninterrupted display of marquetry, features a variety of neoclassical motifs (vase, trailing swags, sunflower motifs etc.) which are hallmarks of the firm’s documented furniture. The cabriole legs, shaped apron and gardrooned ormolu border is an example of Ince and Mayhew’s transitional style of the early 1770s, similarly seen on a single commode c.1770 commissioned for Sir James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale (1736-1802) which sold from the collection of Mrs Henry Ford II (Christie’s New York 31 March 2021 lot 169, $50,000) featuring similar husk swags and branches of foliage to the front.

The use of a vase motif draped with a double husk swag is seen in a more formal style on a pair of commodes made for Lord Willoughby de Broke in 1780 as depicted in a watercolour of the same date, and on two further commodes c.1780, one made for Lord Palmerston now at Broadlands and another for General Richard Vyse. Further examples of these swags as a motif are illustrated and discussed in detail in Lucy Wood, Catalogue of Commodes, London 1994, pp. 195-238.The lines of diminishing husks to the canted corners are an idiosyncratic leitmotif employed by Ince and Mayhew, and interestingly are also seen on two documented pieces made for the 5th Duke of Devonshire still at Chatsworth. A writing table and pembroke table both feature similar trailing husks to their corners, and the frieze of the pembroke table is similarly shaped to the apron of the commodes. Additionally, a music stand with scrolling foliage interlacing both the top and particularly around the shaft of the stand is seen in a similar design scrolled to the top of these commodes. The husk headed by an anthemion in particular is seen on a set of sideboard tables made for The Earl of Kerry c.1770 now at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, and is used in conjunction with trailing foliage and sunflowers to decorate a satinwood display cabinet made for Sir Thomas Rumbold c.1775, now in the Royal Collection. The use of a sunflower motif is also seen on much of the partnership’s documented furniture, most notably to the centre of the top of a commode made for Lord Digby c.1780 now at Sherborne Castle. Interestingly, a satinwood bookcase c.1785 inherited by Lord George from the Chesham family features the same unusual foliage to the front panels as on the top of these commodes.

These commodes were subsequently in the celebrated art collection formed by the industrialist Sir Harold Wernher and his wife Lady Zia, a member of the Russian Royal family. The Wernher Art Collection was one of the greatest of its kind ever assembled in England, housed at Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire and Someries House, Regent’s Park, where these commodes resided in the 1930s. Someries, previously named Scudamore House and renamed to honour a ruined castle next to Luton Hoo, was a eighteenth-century mansion purchased by the couple in 1919 and became an epicentre of English society hosting throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It was destroyed in the Blitz of 1940 and from then the commodes were moved to Luton Hoo. The Wernhers collected English art and design as their focus throughout the interwar period, advised by leading furniture historian R. W. Symonds, they built up an impressive collection of English furniture spanning from William and Mary to the Regency period, as featured in several articles by Edward Pinto in Antiques in 1957. This was often acquired through dealers such as Partridge, Mallet and as seen here Moss Harris. They built up enviable collections of Old Masters and Faberge in this period, some of which is now housed in the Wernher Collection at Ranger’s House, Greenwich.