AN EARLY VICTORIAN DERBYSHIRE INLAID MARBLE TABLE TOP

This table top can possibly be attributed to William Adam (d.1873), who had taken over the management of the Ashford works and Old Royal Museum, Matlock for Mrs. John Mawe in 1831. The works were under the patronage of the 6th Duke of Devonshire (d.1858), who lent Adam examples of Florentine work from Chatsworth. (W. Adam, Gem of the Peak, 4th ed., 1846 and J. M. Tomlinson, Derbyshire Black Marble, 1996, illustrated on the frontispiece). In 1846, William Adam received praise for introducing the 'Mosaic' or 'Florence work' whose 'scrolls, birds, flowers and foliage of the most elegant designs and perfect workmanship, equal to anything that has ever been executed in Italy' (S. Bagshaw, Gazeteer and Directory of Derbyshire).
The ribbon tie motif on the present lot corresponds to a similar top shown in a lithograph from a book of 'Inlaid Marble Tables' by A. Tomlinson, Bakewell, Derbyshire.
The coat of arms to the centre are those of Parkinson impaling Fowler quartering Merrick for John Parkinson of Kinnersley Castle, Herefordshire (1810-1859) and his wife Sarah Levine Fowler (b.1815), daughter of Vice Admiral Robert Merrick Fowler (1780-1860) of Walliscote House, near Reading, Oxfordshire, whom he married in 1842.