A GEORGE III SATINWOOD AND HAREWOOD DEMI-LUNE SIDEBOARD, LATE 18TH CENTURY

A design for a similar large-scale demi-lune sideboard appears in Plate 5 Fig.1 of Thomas Shearer's The Cabinet-Makers' London Book of Prices first published in 1788.

This impressive sideboard, of distinctly generous proportions, is all the more unusual in that it originally formed part of a pair, formerly in the possession of Junius Morgan III and his wife Louise (née Converse) at Saluation, their neo-Georgian estate on an island off the North Shore of Long Island built in the 1920s. Morgan (d.1960) was the eldest grandson of the legendary banker and collector J. Pierpont Morgan, and many items in his collection were inherited from his grandfather's vast holdings. After his widow's death in 1974, the contents of Salutation including the present lot and its pair were sold in a four-day house sale. The House and Estate still survive, though are no longer owned by the Morgan family.