Of serpentine form, the top with gadrooned brass mount and inlaid with foliate cartouche and borders enclosing a ivory inlaid flute and music book surrounded by scrolling leaves and flowers, the frieze inlaid with flowerheads within Greek key, above bead-and-reel moulding, the doors each inlaid further foliate borders, husk swags, and a vase issuing flowers, the sides with carrying handles, the upper and lower angle mounts and mounts to feet later
36¹⁄₂ in. (93 cm.) high; 50 in. (127 cm.) wide; 21 in. (53.5 cm.) deep

The late Sir Anthony de Rothschild, Bt. (1810-1876), Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire;
Sold by order of his daughters Lady Battersea and the Hon. Mrs Eliot Yorke; Christie's, London; 13-14 June 1923, lot 201 (£315 to M. Harris);
With Moss Harris and sold to William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851-1925);
The Art Collections of the late Viscount Leverhulme; Anderson Galleries, New York, 9 February 1926, lot 338 (£4,000).
Lillian S. Whitmarsh; Parke Bernet, New York, 7 April 1961, lot 181 ($10,000);
Bought from the above by Phillips of Hitchen Ltd. at the Antique Dealer's Fair, 1961, and invoiced on 14 June 1961 (£11,250);
The Sir Michael Sobell Collection; Christie's, London, 23 June 1994, lot 77, where acquired post-sale by the present owner.

'The Leverhulme Collection of Furniture', Country Life, 26 September 1925, p. 489, fig. 3.
A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, 1968, pl. 44.
H. Roberts and C. Cator, Industry and Ingenuity: The Partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew, 2022, p. 98.

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Lot Essay

The present commode is attributed to the celebrated cabinetmakers William Ince (d. 1804) and John Mayhew (1736-1811), and is almost certainly a pair to a commode now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Object Number: 59.8). Both commodes share several stylistic similarities to the documented oeuvre of Ince & Mayhew, and are themselves entirely identical, bar the omission of carrying handles on the Metropolitan Museum model and expected variations to the trophies depicted on the marquetry tops. Of particular note are the idiosyncratic burr yew veneers, the use of marquetry foliate scrolls and clasps, often with subtle engraving for effect, and the use of drapery husk swags, all of which are redolent of Ince & Mayhew's work of the 1760s.

A connection has often been made between the present commode and Ince & Mayhew's commission at Broadlands, principally for the use of burr yew on two chests-of-drawers made for Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston (1739-1802) circa 1765. However, the present commode relates more closely to a commode commissioned by Hugh Fortescue, 2nd Earl Fortescue (1719-85) in 1767. Both the present and Fortescue commodes share a subtle serpentine form, again burr yew veneers, and large inlaid and engraved foliate cartouches across the front doors and side panels. Indeed, the present commode is a particularly fine case study for Ince & Mayhew's work. As Charles Cator and Hugh Roberts write, the use of delicate engraving heightened by mastic to mimic the appearance of a printed engraving, as well as the use of inlays differentiated only by the varying natural colour and figuring of the veneers 'are the features that probably constitute the firm's single most original contribution to English furniture decoration, and in practice they may well have been among the first exponents' (H. Roberts and C. Cator, Industry and Ingenuity: The Partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew, 2022, p. 31). Both techniques are employed throughout the marquetry vase, flowers and cartouche, with the barely-visible husk swags at the upper corners a particularly characteristic and subtle inclusion.

Also present in this commode is the use of end-cut marquetry, most often associated with the work of Bernard II van Risamburgh (c. 1730-1767), one of the preeminent ebenistes of the Louis XV period. A similar indebtedness to the French taste is clear in the bold use of gilt-brass mounts and the serpentine form, something of an adaptation of the bombe form often associated with John Linnell (1729-1796) and Pierre Langlois (1718-1767), equally characteristic of Ince & Mayhew's work of the 1770s.

Though remarkable for its use of so many techniques associated with Ince & Mayhew, the present commode belongs to a group of similar commodes with burr yew and marquetry decoration:

1) Property of a Gentleman; Christie's, London, 5 July 1990, lot 141, formerly in the collection of Olaf Hambro at Linton Park, Maidstone, and Mrs. Charles Mills at Hilborough Hall, Norfolk.

2) Property of M. E. Summers.; Sotheby's, London, 18 March 1966 and later illustrated in A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, 1968, pl. 45. This commode, though incorrectly identified at Sotheby's as the Linton Commode, is entirely identical to (1) bar the omission of foliate clasp foot-mounts, which are present on both (1), (6) and the present commode.

3) Illustrated in P. Macquoid, The Age of Satinwood, 1908, pl. 2, from the collection of Lady Russell.

4) Property of the late Margherita, Lady Howard de Walden; Sotheby's, London, 2 December 1977, lot 93, of similar form to (1), (2) and (3) and with almost identical inlay, though with ebonised moulding, and with ebonised angle-mounts carved to the same form as the gilt-brass on those three.

5) Property of a Lady; Christie's, London, 11 November 1971, lot 91, with slightly less elaborate decoration.

6) And possibly also Dreweatts, Berkshire, 5 April 2000, lot 167.

Although the present commode and its pair in the Metropolitan Museum now share the same angle mounts, an illustration of the present commode when sold in 1926 shows the commode with slim beaded mounts, rather than the elaborate foliate angle mounts of the Metropolitan Museum model. An examination of the present commode with the mounts removed indicates that the beaded mounts were removed some time after 1926, and that the foliate mounts added as a sensitive restoration of what may have original to the commode.