A Pair of George II Carved Mahogany Dumbwaiters, Circa 1760

Property of a European Collector, Phillips, London, 22 June 1999, lot 63 (illustrated on the cover);

An Important English Private Collection, Sotheby’s, London, 6 May 2022, lot 29.

Owing to the rise of the merchant class and increased prosperity witnessed in England during the 1740s-1750s, London and the provincial cities saw the development of elegant 'townhouses' with more practical interiors and smaller rooms. These tiered tripod tables are typical of the smaller scale of furnishings that would have been chosen for such fashionable surroundings. This superb pair of 'dumb' or 'silent' waiters, with their intricate baluster galleries and crisply carved stems, hail from the Golden Age of English furniture making and would have been deployed near a dining table or in a drawing room for diners to help themselves, unobserved. In a contemporary account from 1784, Mary Hamilton (1756-18) - niece of Lady Emma Hamilton and a famous bluestocking in her own right - notes that at dinner 'we had dumb-waiters so our conversation was not under any restraint by ye Servants being in ye room' (Macquoid P. and Edwards, R., The Dictionary of English Furniture, England, 1954, Vol. II, p. 227).

Percival Griffiths, perhaps the most renowned furniture collector of all time owned such an example of a single tiered galleried tripod table, illustrated by the furniture historian Percy Macquoid in an article for Country Life Magazine, January 27 1912 p. 140, entitled 'Furniture of the 17th and 18th Centuries, Mr Percival Griffiths collection’. These tables would surely have fulfilled the criteria that the famous historian, author and advisor R. W. Symonds would have been looking for when advising collectors such as J.S. Sykes or Geoffrey Blackwell in the pre or post-war years of the 20th century, ie., the importance of good proportions, a balanced use of carved ornament and a fine line. See Sotheby's London, 15 November 1996, lot 27 and Christie’s London, 10 July 1998, lot 32 for single tiered tripod tables and Christie’s London, 27 November 1975, lot 62 for a pair of similar dumb-waiters.