European Furniture, Silver & Ceramics
European Furniture, Silver & Ceramics
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
A George II Mahogany Bureau Cabinet, Circa 1740
Lot Closed
April 12, 03:42 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
A George II Mahogany Bureau Cabinet, Circa 1740
The architectural pediment with stepped, dentil and Greek-key moldings, and centered by a later-added clock and moulded door, with silvered dial signed Alexr Wilson London, with a mirrored door below also carved with Greek-key and leaf-tips opening to an interior fitted with shelves, flanked by tapering fluted pilasters headed by capitals within egg-and-dart border, the lower section with a slant front enclosing an interior fitted with drawers, pigeonholes and secret drawers and with three graduated drawers below, the base with later gadrooned moulding and replaced bracket feet; restorations
height 7 ft. 7 1/2 in.; width 43 1/2 in.; depth 23 1/2 in.
The Hon. Mrs. Nellie Ionides, Buxted Park, East Sussex
The Ionides Collection, Sotheby's London, 31 May 1963, lot 174; acquired by Partridge, London, for £500
Andy Warhol, New York
The Andy Warhol Collection, Sotheby's New York, 23 April 1988, lot 3245
This elegant cabinet formerly stood in the entrance hall to the artist Andy Warhol's Upper East Side townhouse, part of the classical interiors designed by his companion Jed Johnson, who tragically perished in the 1996 TWA crash off Long Island.
It was previously in the collection of the Hon. Mrs. Nellie Ionides (1883-1962), daughter of the 1st Viscount Bearsted and major collector of Oriental art and philanthropist, celebrated for saving the 18th-century Octagon Room at Orleans House in Twickenham for the nation. Her second husband was the art deco architect Basil Ionides (1884-1950), scion of an Anglo-Greek shipping family who were notable art patrons in their own right, and famous for re-designing the interior of the rebuilt Savoy Theatre in London.
In 1931 they acquired Buxted Park in East Sussex, a 1725 house that was mostly destroyed in a 1940 fire, following which the couple reconstructed the interiors in a historic style, incorporating period architectural elements salvaged from bombed out buildings, and filled them with an important collection of Georgian and Regency furniture. The auction of the collection following Mrs. Ionides's death was one of the landmark English Furniture sales of the 1960s.