A Matched Pair of George III Mahogany Dressing Commodes, in the manner of William Gomm, Circa 1765

The smaller commode:
Frank Partridge, New York and London
Phillips Oxford, 7 November 1991, lot 237
Property from the Hascoe Family Collection, Sotheby's New York, 23 January 2011, lot 230

By the mid-18th century chests of drawers with serpentine fronts had become an established category of English furniture, and are documented in designs for 'French Commode Tables' that appear in plates 45-48 of the First Edition of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinetmaker's Director (1754). The fitted upper drawers traditionally incorporated baize-lined slides that could be used both for brushing garments and for writing. Commodes of this form are particularly associated with the cabinetmaker William Gomm (c.1698-1794), based at Newcastle House, Clerkenwell Close, London, whose documented work demonstrates the influence of published designs by Chippendale, Lock and Copland and Thomas Johnson. Gomm is also known to have worked for a time with the celebrated German cabinetmaker Abraham Roentgen who was based in London for several years during the 1730s. By 1756 William had taken his eldest son Richard into partnership, and from 1763 was trading under the name William Gomm & Son & Co. It is possible his son may have played a leading role in the design and manufacture of the workshop's output by this time.

A surviving drawing by Gomm dated 1761 (Winterthur Library, Delaware; illustrated in Lindsay Boynton, 'William and Richard Gomm', The Burlington Magazine, June 1980, pp. 395-400, fig. 33) depicts a serpentine commode of identical design to the offered pair, with four tiers of drawers with canted front corners in the form of scrolled pilasters, on curved bracket feet with a scroll carved apron. Gomm supplied a series of four commodes of this model in c.1763 to his most important patron, Edward, 5th Lord Leigh at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire. One pair and a single commode from this commission were sold Christie’s, London, 3 May 1962 (lots 53 and 54), and numerous similar chests of drawers attributed to Gomm have appeared on the market in recent decades including a single commode sold anonymously formerly in the collection of Sunny von Bülow at Clarendon Court, Newport, sold Sotheby's New York 28-29 October 1988, lot 387, and a near pair sold Christie’s London, Apter-Fredericks 75 Years of Important English Furniture, 19 January 2021, lot 10.