An Important Pair of George II Carved Mahogany Marble-Topped Side Tables in the Manner of Matthias Lock Circa 1740

each with a later breche noire et Blanche veneered marble slab with canted corners above a conforming plain frieze within foliate and ribbon-and-rose carved moldings and centered by a mask of Hercules draped with the pelt of the Nemean lion ribbon-tied at the top of each leg and continuing to the sides, the naturalistically carved veined muscular legs with hairy paw feet above ball toes.  

Possibly commissioned by Sir Thomas Robinson for Rokeby Park, Co. Durham
J. M. Botibol, Hanway Street, London
‘The Notable English Furniture, Paintings, Silver and Appointments of the Palatial Georgian Mansion, 56 East 93 Street, New York,’ sold, Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York City, April 26, 27, & 28, 1956, lots 564, 565
Sold, Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York City, April 4, 1959, lots 145, 146
The Claremont Club, 44 Berkeley Square, London
The Collection of John Aspinall, sold, Christie’s, London, June 24, 1976, lot 75
Ven House, Somerset, the Contents sold by Christie’s, June 21-22, 1999, lot 287

Apollo Magazine, August,1987, John Harris, ‘William Kent’s 44 Berkeley Square’, p. 104, fig. 7, The Saloon or Great Room, The Pair of Tables when owned by John Aspinall

See:

Percy Macquoid, English Furniture Tapestry and Needlework of the XVIth-XIXth Centuries – A Record of the Collection in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Formed by the First Viscount Leverhulme, London, 1928, p. 54, item 159, pl. 49, for a related chair from a set of six

Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 1953, vol. I, p. 266, fig. 126, a related chair in the Collection of the Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle

Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, 1953, vol. I., p. 267, fig. 128, a related chair formerly in the Collection of the Duke of Leeds, Hornby Castle

Peter Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the 18^th Century, London, 1958, pl. 48

The boldly carved mask of Hercules draped with the pelt of the Nemean Lion on the apron of the present pair of tables is closely related to a small group of similar tables and manuscript designs attributed to the carver Matthias Lock (b.c.1710-d.1765). Lock is recorded as one of a number of joiners or carvers, spanning three or more generations, bearing the same name and possibly from the same family. After being apprenticed to his father, also Matthias, a joiner in the parish of St. Paul’s, Shadwell, and to Richard Goldsaddle, a carver in the Parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, he appears to have become a journeyman carver in his own right in 1731. Other than his marriage in 1734 to Mary Lee in 1734, there do not seem to be any surviving documents indicating the progress of his career until 1744 when, according to Thomas Johnson’s The Life of the Author, he was employed in the workshop of Thomas Whittle. Johnson described Lock as ‘the famous Matthias Lock, a most excellent carver, and reputed to be the best Ornament draughts-man in Europe’ and when he himself joined Whittle’s firm in 1744, he infers that Lock had considerable influence within the workshop and had already worked there for some years. Lock became Johnson’s mentor, lending him his drawings to copy, and furthering his skills as a designer and draughtsman.

Although Lock’s association with Whittle and his partner Samuel Norman remained at least until 1755, Johnson noting that he had ‘greatly declined in his health, so that he did not attend the shop so much as their business required,’ his precise role still needs clarification. It seems that besides being part of Whittle’s workshop he also worked independently as a designer in particular for Thomas Chippendale, for whom Christopher Gilbert considered he could also have worked as a sub-contractor. He also published a series of engraved plates illustrating carvers’ ornaments in the French taster, the first of these in 1740 being A New Drawing Book of Ornaments, Shields, Compartments, Masks &c., which was followed in 1744 by Six Sconces and in 1746 by Six Tables. Some of these were re-issued during the 1760s, and other designs were published in 1752 with H. Copeland. A large body of original drawings by Lock survives, some in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and a larger group at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which are contained within two folio volumes. These were acquired from his grandson, George Lock, in 1862 and 1863, and besides original compositions, include others related to the work of Thomas Chippendale and to Ince and Mayhew. An interesting group of some six small sheets of drawings for furniture are annotated with the days spent on the pieces by Lock and other craftsmen and the wages due to them. These show pieces commissioned by the Earl of Poulet for Hinton House, Somerset, and are a further indication that Lock worked for an employer as well as being an independent craftsman and designer. Some of the pieces remained at Hinton House until the collection was dispersed in the 1960s, but unfortunately no further documents survive which night indicate their origins.

The present tables are related to two drawings in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, both of which have aprons carved with the mask of Hercules and the Nemean mask. The first of these, (see: P. Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the 18th Century, pl. 48), is for a pier table with coupled console supports, of which several examples survive. These include a pair formerly at Ditchley House, Oxfordshire, and now at Temple Newsam House, a pair in the collection of the Earl of Litchfield at Shugborough Hall, and a single table formerly at Hamilton Palace and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These all differ in the decorative detailed carving to the frieze and moldings, and Christopher Gilbert has suggested, Furniture at Temple Newsam and Lotherton Hall, that the architect Henry Flitcroft might also have been involved in their design, as he is known to have supplied five drawings for table frames for Ditchley. The present pair of tables, with their boldly formed cabriole legs with their naturalistically carved detail, relates to another, unpublished, drawing at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This also shows a frieze mounted with the mask of Hercules draped with the pelt of the Nemean lion, although the cabriole legs with hairy paw feet are carved at the knees with satyrs masks. Another table in carved gilt wood of this form but with lion masks on the knees was sold Sotheby's, New York, from the Collection of Esmond Bradley Martin, October 30, 2002, lot 199.    

The unusually detailed, heavily veined legs with their hairy paw feet and carved fetlocks seen on the present tables are also related to a group of chairs with similarly carved supports. Different examples of these were formerly in the Collection of the Duke of Leeds at Hornby Castle, the Collection of the Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle, and the Leverhulme Collection, Port Sunlight. As yet, no firm attribution has been made as to the maker of these chairs, but it is clear that the individuality of the finely carved detail of the veining is closely related to the carving on the legs of the present tables. Other than this detail, the chairs have no known affinity to any of Lock’s drawings, and therefore his connection with them, as with these tables, has to remain speculative.

One of the tables bears the fragment of a manuscript paper label inscribed in ink ‘Benjamin Ridsdale, April 7th 179-.’ This name is also recorded, with the date 7 May 1793, inscribed in pencil on a carved pine sideboard-table in the neo-classical taste at Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. Benjamin Ridsdale is not recorded as a cabinet-maker, although he was possibly connected to a Thomas Ridsdale who is recorded as a cabinetmaker working in York in 1820. The son of a widow, Hannah Ridsdale, he was apprenticed to the cabinetmaker Robert Dugelby of St. Peter the Little Parish on July 18, 1820. Because of the disparity in the dates of the table still at Rokeby, which is in the neo-classical taste, and the present tables, it is possible that he worked at Rokeby as a restorer.

This connection with Rokeby Park offers the intriguing possibility that they were originally part of the furnishings of that house, which was built for Sir Thomas Robinson (1700?-1777) who had succeeded to the estate on the death of his father in 1720. After his education in England, he traveled extensively in Europe studying in particular the classical architecture of Greece and Rome, and in particular that of Palladio.   

From the early 1760s became involved with the Ranelagh Gardens at Chelsea both as manager and as a shareholder, and also purchasing many of the properties within the vicinity of the gardens. Presumably the expense involved with these purchases together with his building of a new house at Prospect Place, Chelsea, caused him to sell his Yorkshire estate. Rokeby was advertised in the London Evening Post in 1765 as ‘A considerable Freehold Estate with a modern built Mansion House, Offices and Museum, and with or without the Furniture, Library, Pictures, Statues, Busts, Sculptures, Bronzes and other Curiosities.’ The house was finally sold in 1769 to J. S. Morritt of Cawood, remaining with his descendants to this day.

A number items of sculpture from Robinson’s collection can still be identified in the house to-day together with a number of portraits the Royal family including  Princess Caroline by William Kent which is dated 1741. This is perhaps the only surviving link between Robinson and the artist ‘whose architecture and garden design he admired so much.’ Some pieces which can possibly linked with the original furnishings, in particular a pair of commodes and a writing desk which are closely related in design, style and ornament to pieces designed by William Kent and made by the carver John Boson for Lady Burlington, wife of the 3rd Earl, for Chiswick House. These remained at Rokeby until the 1920s when they were acquired for the Royal Collection by the late Queen Mary.

If indeed the present tables also formed part of the original furnishings at Rokeby, they were presumably removed at the same time as the desk and commodes. Their history thereafter is somewhat obscure, being sold by the London dealer Botibol to a private collection in New York which was sold at auction in 1956. It was after this date that the tables were white-painted and gilded.