A fine regency ormolu-mounted and parcel-gilt rosewood bonheur du jour ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN MCLEAN circa 1810

in two parts, the upper section with three-quarter pierced ormolu gallery above an open shelf with three pierced ormolu trelliswork panels, all over two cedar-lined drawers, the projecting lower section with a reeded ormolu border and parcel-gilt molding above a frieze drawer opening to a leather-lined writing panel sliding back to a well, the right side fitted with ink and pen recesses, raised on ring-turned tapering legs headed by fluted rectangular ormolu panels and joined by a concave-fronted platform shelf with pierced three-quarter ormolu gallery and ending in casters.

Anonymous sale, Christie’s, New York, June 26, 1982, lot 177

G. Beard & J. Goodison, English Furniture 1500-1840, 1987, p. 242

This neatly finished rosewood veneered bonheur du jour epitomizes the finest work of the London cabinet-maker John McLean & Son. First recorded in Little Newport, Leicester Square, London, his trade card described him as a ‘Cabinet. Chair Maker and UPHOLDER’, the laurel wreath and husk ornamented cartouche enclosing a drawing of a ladies’ dressing table with cabriole legs in the French manner. By 1790 the firm had moved to Upper Marylebone Street at which address they remained until the demise of the firm in 1825, although two other addresses are recorded at the turn of the century at Pancras Street and Upper Terrace, both close to Tottenham Court Road.

McLean’s firm is notable for its regular use of trade labels, several versions of which are recorded, which were normally glued to the insides of drawers. These are normally of simple design bearing the firm’s name and various addresses, although two pictorial examples are recorded. One shows an elaborately styled Gothic shop front displaying the sign board ‘Ino MACLEAN & SON’, the other showing a fashionably furnished drawing room with the words ‘Elegant / PARISIAN FURNITURE / WAREROOMS ‘. The mention of Parisian Furniture is particularly interesting as the design of the firm’s earlier furniture is undoubtedly in the French taste. An announcement in The Times of January 31, 1806 declared that the firm ‘have re-opened their Warerooms with a new and elegant assemblage of Parisian furniture’, further advertising on February 11, 1811 that that they wished to ‘acquaint the Nobility, gentry and Public in general, they have in their Ware rooms a new and elegant assortment of every article of useful and ornamental furniture…. Which being the production of their own manufactory, they are able to offer on terms most advantageous: bedding of every description: pier and chimney glasses, carpeting &c’.

A surviving account which covers the period from July 1806 to April 1807 clearly illustrates the extent of the firm’s business; totaling £4,793. 11s. 10d., it relates to the almost complete furnishing of Middleton Park, Oxfordshire for George Villiers, fifth Earl of Jersey and his wife, Lady Sarah Fane, heiress of Robert Childe owner of Osterley Park. This, together with another account for the same client relating to pieces supplied for work carried out at his house in Berkeley are the only the only known documented commissions, although pieces attributed to the firm are recorded at Grimsthorpe Castle, Saltram and Harewood House.       

Fortunately, the firm’s practice of labeling furniture allows firm attributions to be made to a wide variety of pieces whose authorship might otherwise have remained anonymous, such as the present piece. However, attributions can also be made by studying the cabinet work and construction of his pieces. Invariably veneered in rosewood, the richly dark figuring of the wood, although now faded, was enriched with parcel gilding and lacquered brass mounts, the most notable being the inset tablets of ‘match-striker’ design which are one of McLean’s ‘hall marks’. The interior construction is always of high quality, the smaller drawers and bottoms of larger drawers being made of cedar. It is interesting to note that over some twenty years the profile of much of McLean’s furniture remained the same, particularly in the design and ornament of such pieces as the present bonheur du jour. Whereas the pieces dating from the early 1800s have a simplicity of line and clean ornament, pieces dating c. 1815, at which time his son William seems to have taken over the firm, are less refined, with coarser and less finely cast gilt metal ornament,  and with brass inlay in the manner of Boulle.        

Unusually, McLean’s firm is mentioned in Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet Dictionary 1803, the author commenting that the design of a pouch work table, p. 292, ‘was taken from one executed by Mr M’Lean in Marty-le-bone street, near Tottenham court road, who finishes these small articles in the neatest manner’. However, as mentioned above, the firm’s style and execution became less assured after 1815 which is mirrored by their increasing financial problems as witnessed by their increasing inability to pay the rent and rates on their premises. By 1822 William was now a ‘Bankrupt in Prison – a few chairs in House not worth taking’ and, although in 1824 half the rates were paid, the records of the King’s Bench indicating that he was ‘Dyeing of an asthma ‘, a final entry stating that he ‘Died so poor that his body was sent in a box by wagon into the country to relations’ (See: Furniture History, The Journal of the Furniture History Society Journal).

See:

Furniture History, The Journal of the Furniture History Society, 1978, vol. XIV, ‘John McLean and Son’, Simon Redburn, pp. 31-37. pls. 38b, 39 a and b

Edward Lennox Boyd, Ed., Masterpieces of English Furniture – The Gerstenfeld Collection, 1998, p.204, catalogue item no. 25, for an identical bonheur-du-jour, with different drawer pulls and foliate escutcheons and with a printed paper label: ‘Manufactured and Sold by / JOHN McLEAN and SON / 58, Upper Mary-le-bone-Street, / The end of Howland Street, Portland Place.’