A GEORGE III MAHOGANY PARTNER'S DESK

This desk is conceived in the George II romantic 'Gothic' style, such as the connoisseur Horace Walpole promoted from the 1740s at Strawberry Hill, his Thames-side villa in Richmond. Its top, displaying cluster-columned tablet corners, corresponds to the 'Library Table' pattern issued in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754, pl. LV. As Chippendale commented of such desks: 'They frequently stand in the middle of a room, which requires both sides to be made useful'. Another desk of the same form was sold 50 Years of Collecting: Decorative Arts of Georgian England; Christie's, London, 14 May 2003, lot 169 (£111,650).