A George III Mahogany Hanging Shelf, Circa 1760

Ronald Phillips Ltd., London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 22 April 2005.

Hanging shelves like the present lot were somewhat flexible in their utility: George Hepplewhite notes in his Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide that they “are often wanted as Book-Shelves in closets or Ladies’ rooms” and that they are “also adapted to place China on”. This was in the third 1794 edition of the Guide, yet the form had been popular for some time, with Chippendale including numerous examples some four decades earlier in the first edition of his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754), pl.CXII-CXIV. Hepplewhite also notes that, like the present lot, they “should be made of mahogany”: this choice of timber material is likely not just for the attractive grain of the wood, but because its high strength allowed for the fashionable pierced designs that often took the form of chinoiserie-influenced lattice fretwork.