A Pair of George III Gilt-Metal Mounted Satinwood, Kingwood, Tulipwood, Burr Yew and Marquetry Demilune Side Cabinets, probably Irish and possibly by William Moore of Dublin, Circa 1785

Louth Hall, Ardee, County Louth, Ireland;

Partridge Fine Arts, London;

Fred and Kay Krehbiel, Chicago, acquired 19 April 1994;

Hindman, Chicago, 15 March 2023, lot 72.

Rosemary Luddy, 'Every Article in the Inlaid Way: The Furniture of William Moore', Irish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 18 (2002), p.46 fig. 5 (one commode illustrated)

William Moore (fl.1768-1814) was one of the most important cabinetmakers active in Dublin in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and arguably the most important practitioner of fine neoclassical marquetry, a skill he developed whilst training in the London workshop of Ince & Mayhew between c.1768 and 1777. In April 1782 he placed an advertisement in Faulkner's Dublin Journal promoting his 'Inlaid Warehouse Room No. 22 Abbey-street' selling a variety of case furniture with 'every article in the inlaid way’. He appears to have had a predilection for producing richly inlaid commodes and pier tables of demi-lune form, and works that have been confidently attributed to him include a single commode in the Victoria & Albert Museum (W.56:1 to 3-1925) and a pair in the Metropolitan Museum (61.189.1-2) as well as a pair of pier tables in the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York (1967-87-1-a,b).

He also specialised in manufacturing pianoforte cases, an example of which with a keyboard supplied by William Southwell of Dublin is in the Ulster Museum (illustrated in the Knight of Glin and James Peill, Irish Furniture, London 2007, p.166 fig. 226). In the form of a demilune pier table, the top is inlaid with a similar fan motif to the present commodes and interestingly also employs burr yew veneers, a relatively rare choice of timber traditionally associated with the Ince & Mayhew workshop, although a small pier table also incorporating an inlaid fan motif and burr yew veneers was supplied to Thomas Cobbe at Newbridge House in c.1790 by the cabinetmaker John Wisdom of 21 Jervis Street, Dublin (ill. Glin and Peill, p.167 fig. 228).

Louth Hall was the ancestral demesne of the Plunkett family, Barons of Louth, and the original medieval tower house was refurbished in the Georgian Gothick style in c.1760 and 1805. The last family member to reside in the property was the 14th Lord Louth who died in 1941, after which the house was abandoned and now survives as a ruin.