GEORGE MORANT OF BOND STREET LONDON (1770-1846)

1783

79.00 cm high

31.10 inches high

142.00cm

55.91 inches

Stamped with the makers name and address, ‘G. J. Morant, 86 New Bond Street London’, in use between 1842 and 1851, and ‘Edwards & Roberts’.

Our table was inspired by the 1838 publication by Richard Bridgens, ‘Furniture with Candelabra’ showing a ‘Marquetrie Centre Table’. Very similar tables are to be seen in Charlecote Park, Carlton Towers, Victoria & Albert Museum, the Indianappolis Museum of Fine Art and Temple Newsham. Christopher Gilbert’s 3 volume exegesis, ‘Furniture at Temple Newsham House & Lotherton Hall’, published 1978, shows on pp 318/9 of Volume 2, an almost identical table supplied to the 5th Duke of Buccleuch by the mercier marchand, Edward Holmes Baldock.

‘The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840’, published by the Furniture History Society informs that Morant Snr. was a maker of carved and gilded frames from early in the reign of George IVth, and his trade card describes the company as ‘Ornamental Painter & Paper Hanging Manufacturer to their Royal Highnesses’. Work was executed for Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Robert Peel, the Dukes of Sussex, Cambridge and Sutherland, inter alia. The company exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851, the New York International Exhibition of 1853, and the London International Exhibition of 1862. ‘Masterpieces of Industrial Art & Sculpture, edited by J.B.Waring, published in 1862 illustrates a wonderful sideboard made for Lord Ellesmere, that was shown at this exhibition. A Royal Warrant was granted in 1840, by Queen Victoria. Throughout the whole of the Nineteenth Century, they were recognised as one of England’s most eminent and skilful cabinet makers.

Constructed in Ebony and cross banded in Kingwood, having many other specimen and stained woods used in the complex marquetry work. The table rises from quadrapartite feet of inwardly scrolling form, fitted with concealed brass castors, sweeping upwards into a tapering, and concave quadrilateral central column, inlaid with flower filled cartouches. The rotating top is of octagonal form, having a shaped foliate inlaid apron incorporating two long and two short drawers, and dressed with eight asymmetrical cartouches housing scenes of a bucolic nature, interspersed with bouquets of native wild flowers tied with blue ribbon bows in a ‘lovers’ knot’ and inset with a shaped tooled leather top.

FOR SALE