Provenance & Patina: Important English Furniture from a West Coast Collection
Provenance & Patina: Important English Furniture from a West Coast Collection
A George II Walnut Side Table Attributed to Giles Grendey, Circa 1740
Auction Closed
June 18, 08:33 PM GMT
Estimate
60,000 - 100,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
the associated rectangular brèche violette marble top with a moulded edge above a concave and cushion-moulded freize centered by a satyr mask on cabriole legs carved with anthemion, diminishing foliate swags and C-scrolls and with claw and ball feet, inscribed in blue pencil '10'
height 34 ¾ in.; width 41 in.; depth 26 ½ in.
88.3 cm; 104.1 cm; 67.3 cm
Private Collection, United Kingdom, sold Christie's London, 31 October 2012, lot 80;
With Ronald Phillips Ltd, London;
Christie's London, 13 November 2019, lot 244.
The attribution of this table to Giles Grendey rests on the close similarity between the carved mask and knees with documented examples that bear stamps tracing them back to his workshop. The mask and knees of this table closely resemble those in the suite of furniture pictured in R. W. Symonds’ publication English Furniture from Charles II to George II, in which all illustrations are of pieces in the collection of Percival D. Griffiths, F.S.A. at Sandridgebury, Hertfordshire.1 One of these later sold at Christie’s,2 where the cataloguing notes that the chair is stamped WH. Numerous Grendey pieces feature the initials “of the individual chairmakers employed by Grendey”,3 and WH corresponds to a certain William House, apprenticed on 14th April 1747 at a £15 sum of consideration.4
Giles Grendey (1693-1780) was one of the most important cabinet-makers of the George II period in England. In 1729 he was named Livery of the Joiner's Company, and later became Master in 1766. His address at Aylesbury House, St John’s Square in Clerkenwell was given in a newspaper article of 1731 reporting on a fire: apparently Grendey, described as a “Cabinet-Maker and Chair Maker”, lost a great deal of his stock including a chair of “rich and curious Workmanship” that was intended to be “a Present to a German Prince”.5 This is not the only example of his prestigious international trade – his most famous work is a luxurious suite of red-japanned furniture for the Duke of Infantada’s Palace of Lazcano in Spain, of which examples are held today at the Victoria and Albert Museum (W.64-1938) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (37.115), among others.
1 R. W. Symonds, English Furniture from Charles II to George II, London, 1929, pp. 32-33, figs. 11-13.
2 Christie’s London, the Gothick Pavilion – Byron to Beaton, 9 December 2010, lot 29.
3 Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert (ed.), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660 – 1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 372. Also available online at: <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/dict-english-furniture-makers/g> [accessed 19 April 2024]
4 Ibid., p. 371.
5 Beard and Gilbert, op. cit., p.371.