Property from the Collection of the Earl of Home, including 'The Montagu Heirlooms' (Lots 1-32)
No reserve
Auction Closed
May 22, 05:01 PM GMT
Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
the 4.7cm-thick top of rectangular form
91cm deep, 184cm wide
Please note that this lot will not be on public view in our New Bond Street galleries for the auction exhibition, but we would be more than happy to arrange a viewing by appointment at our warehouse in Greenford. To enquire, please contact cameron.dileo@sothebys.com.
By descent in the collection of the Earls of Home, latterly at The Hirsel, Berwickshire.
In inventories taken at Douglas Castle, Lanarkshire, from 1837 and 1844, there is a reference to a single marble topped table. The present lot may well have been a part of this piece. The scale of the slab and its location at the castle, the principle seat for the Earl's of Home, perhaps indicate a table of importance. It would certainly have been costly to import from Italy to Scotland. See, William Muir, Inventory and Valuation of Household Furniture [etc.] which belonged to the late Lord Douglas taken at Bothwell & Douglas Castles, May 1837, Douglas Castle, p. 23, 'Entrance Hall / Oak Table with Marble Top’, and, Anon, Inventory and Valuation of Moveable Property at Douglas Castle, April, 1844, 'Stair Case and Upper Lobby / Carved Table with Marble Top’.
From 1757, Archibald Douglas, 1st Duke of Douglas (1694–1761) began construction of an ambitious castellated mansion at Douglas on the site of a much earlier house. He commissioned the Adam brothers to create a new family seat, a gothic style mansion that was ambitious in scale. His death in 1761 curtailed the project, but not before much of the building work had taken place.
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