An Early George III Carved Mahogany Wall Bracket, Circa 1765

Lord Hollenden, Hall Place, Leigh, Kent;

With Hotspur Antiques, London;

Ronald Phillips Ltd., London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 19 June 2008.

This wall bracket, with provenance from the Hollenden family’s country house in Kent called Hall Place, is part of a distinct group of rare mahogany wall brackets of a closely similar form. Generally, mahogany wall brackets from the mid-eighteenth century survive in far fewer number than those in giltwood; within that group, there are a small handful that follow this distinctive design, several of which have been in major early-twentieth-century collections. They are distinguished not only by their fluidly elegant design but also by their sophisticated carving in notably fine specimens of mahogany.

One of the other documented models of wall brackets in this design was in the collection of Judge Erwin Untermyer, and is illustrated in the printed catalogue of the collection by Yvonne Hackenbroch: this model has a wider and more architectural plinth incorporating dentilled and egg-and-dart friezes, presumably the reason for its larger overall measurements.¹ This Untermyer example also has the finial that is most similar to the present lot, since it is also in the form of a scroll issuing acanthus leaves. A second bracket was in the collection of Sir Harry and Lady Hague, before later being sold at Sotheby’s London on 15 November 1996 for £50,000. The Hagues, great furniture collectors of the first half of the twentieth century in the same connoisseurial manner as Judge Untermyer, lived at the Chantrey, Elstree and were advised by the eminent furniture historian Ralph Edwards; he was evidently aware of this unusual model of wall bracket, since he included an illustration of it in the revised 1954 edition of the Dictionary of English Furniture.² A small illustration of another wall bracket apparently matching the Hague model is printed in Anthony Coleridge’s Chippendale Furniture;³ the photograph is credited to Hotspur Ltd, which is not mentioned in the provenance of the cataloguing at Sotheby’s in 1996, therefore suggesting that this is a question of two matching brackets and not the same example. This example also has minor variations to the ornament, since it has gadrooning on the upper border and terminates in a square base with a ball finial.

¹ Y. Hackenbroch, English Furniture with Some Furniture of Other Countries in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, Norwich 1958, pl. 306.

² P. Macquoid and R. Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., Woodbridge 1954, p.118, fig.10.

³ Anthony Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London 1968, fig.306.