An important Regency Rosewood brass-inlaid and parcel-gilt center table, the top inset with Italian specimen marbles Circa 1815, English

the brass-bound rectangular top inset with a panel composed of squares of specimen marbles within an ebony border inlaid with cut–brass foliate scrolls, the paneled frieze with brass leaf-tip moldings and inlaid with cut-brass, and with a frieze drawer operated by a spring button lock opening to a manuscript paper panel inscribed Catalogo della qui annessa Serie di Petre Silicie e Calcarie, in No 120, and a list of the marbles on the top, the flared reeded stem arising from a collar of stiff leaves issuing from foliate scrolls above a further collar of stylized scrolling leaves, supported on a concave-sided rectangular plinth conforming to the frieze, and supported on lion paw feet with scrolled and foliate brackets.

Anonymous sale, Christie’s, New York, January 29, 1994, lot 413

Mallett P. L. C., London

Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, July 4, 1996, lot 282

Mallet P. L. C., Trade Catalogue, 1995, pp. 46, 47

Lanto Synge, Mallett Millenium, 1999, p. 311, fig. 404

This magnificent table richly ornamented with carved giltwood and brass inlay epitomizes the opulent taste of the Regency period and that of George IV as illustrated by Rudolph Ackermann in The Repository of Arts which was published between 1809 and 1828. It was presumably specially commissioned to display the marble slab inset with the one hundred and twenty specimens of Petre Silicie e Calcarie. This would have been acquired in Italy, possibly in Rome, by an English aristocrat or gentleman undertaking a Grand Tour of the European continent, which had been an almost obligatory part of his education, certainly from the beginning of the 18^th century if not earlier. Invariably ‘souvenirs’ were purchased by these travelers, for example Charles Hope-Weir, brother of the 2^nd Earl of Hopetoun, who was accompanied by the architect Robert Adam, purchased several slabs of Sicilian jasper in Rome in 1755, two of which were then placed on giltwood frames commissioned from the cabinet-maker James Cullen. Other ‘slabs’ acquired in Italy, which were then placed on English frames, are found in several English family collections including Corsham Court and Burghley House - some of those at the latter house are inlaid with various forms of lava from Vesuvius.

The present slab continues the tradition of collecting practiced by these earlier travelers but, although several similar inlaid tops are recorded, it is particularly rare, in that it still retains its original ‘key’; presumably many such tops were supplied with these, but being of paper the majority have been lost.

Another example was illustrated and discussed in The Connoisseur, October 1973, by Christopher Gilbert, ‘A Specimen Marble Table’. Of circular form, this is supported on a gilt-metal-mounted carved mahogany tripod table, and retains the original manuscript description. Dated March 1831, it describes, in Italian, the top as ‘A circular dining table of white statuary marble, inlaid with choice pietra-dura and ancient and modern marbles in a new geometric shape made of a star with twenty four rays’. It was purchased in Rome from ‘Councillor Giacomo Rafaelli, Via del Babuino No. 92, Near the Albert Theatre In Rome’. A similar ‘perspective’ top acquired in Rome in 1820 by Stephen Tempest of Broughton Hall, near Skipton, Yorkshire, was fitted with a frame supplied by Gillow of Lancaster. Described as ‘a handsome pillar and claw for your circular marble slab, richly carved in Rosewood’, it still remains at Broughton.

However, the brass inlay on this table does suggest a London maker familiar in the art of Buhl work, such as Louis Le Gaigneur who is recorded at Queen Street Edgware Road, London 1815-1816, or Thomas Parker (1805-1830), ‘Cabinet & Buhl Manufacturer to H. R. H. the Prince Regent & Royal Family’. Of these two, Parker is the most probable, with known pieces from his workshop being closer in style. Some of the carved giltwood ornament of the table, particularly the classical column support issuing from acanthus scrolls and supported on bacchic lion feet, are related to the designs of Peter & Michael Angelo Nicholson’s The Practical Cabinet-Maker, published in 1826. The authors note that ‘the tops of the tables are often beautifully ornamented with mosaic work'.

See:

Christopher Gilbert, editor, The Practical Cabinet Maker – P. and M. A. Nicholson, Wakefield, 1973

The Connoisseur, October 1973, ‘A Specimen Marble Table’, Christopher Gilbert, pp. 78-81