A HIGHLY IMPORTANT PAIR OF MARQUETRY COMMODES

A HIGHLY IMPORTANT PAIR OF
MARQUETRY COMMODES
A highly important pair of semi-elliptical marquetry
and ormolu commodes
Each with a central drawer and two hinged, sprung quadrant drawers in the frieze, over
three graduated front drawers and two quadrant cupboards enclosing shelves, standing on
four short legs with vase-shaped feet.
Attributed to Mayhew & Ince, c. 1775–80
Each commode is veneered with panels of harewood and West Indian satinwood, with
Height 34½ in (87 cm) Width 59 in (150 cm) Depth 24½ in (62 cm)
tulipwood cross-banding, purplewood banding, and ‘white’ and ‘black’ stringing and
cockbeads.
The harewood and satinwood serve as dark and light grounds to the marquetry decoration
of each commode, which centres on a coat of arms on the top (Birch impaling Ryves),
surrounded by ribbon-tied husk festoons, crossed palms and foliate trails, with urns, semipaterae, acanthus and further ribbon-tied husks on the frieze, the cupboard doors and the
‘pilasters’ that divide the cupboards from the front drawers.
The lower drawers (veneered without marquetry) are each mounted with a pair of ormolu
ring handles with pierced patera back-plates; and the architectural form is further defined
by three horizontal ormolu mounts – gadrooning around the top, rosettes and ribbon
beneath the frieze, and reed and ribbon at the bottom.
The legs have shallow blocks of marquetry fluting above ormolu-mounted vase-shaped
feet, clad in acanthus with ball terminals.
THE COAT-OF-ARMS
The arms on the Mallett Commodes are those of Birch impaling Ryves, for Robert Birch
M.P. (d. 1810), of Turvey House, Donabate, co. Dublin and his wife Catherine (d.1819),
daughter of William Ryves, of Castle Jane, co. Limerick, whom he married in Dublin in 1759.
At the time of his marriage Faulkner’s Dublin Journal refers to him as ‘an eminent
merchant of this City’, but contemporary parliamentary sketches are less complimentary.
G. O. Sayles in ‘Contemporary Sketches of the Members of the Irish Parliament in 1782’,
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 56, 1954/54, p. 237 quotes from the 1782
publication and records that ‘he bought the parliamentary seat of Belturbet, co. Cavan
from Lord Lanesborough, ... Lord Buckingham made him Clerk of the Quick Rents , £150 a
year; he will support any government and take anything he can get’.
Evidently Birch ran into rather dire financial circumstances but this appointment seems
to have saved him from penury and he was still residing at Turvey House in 1789. Birch
appears to have leased Turvey House from Lord Trimlestown. The house was of great
antiquity although its general appearance was that of a building of the 17th century.
Robert Birch and Turvey House
PROVENANCE
Robert Birch belonged to a different social spectrum from other known Irish clients of
Supplied c. 1775–80 to Robert Birch (d. 1810) and his wife Catherine, née Ryves (d. 1819)
Mayhew & Ince, but this may be primarily a factor of the chance survival of archival
– whose arms, impaled, are depicted on the top of each commode – probably for Turvey
records. His own patronage of the firm, after all, would be unknown but for the coat of arms
House, Donabate, co. Dublin.
proudly depicted on the commode tops.
Perhaps Arthur S. Vernay, Inc. (before 1918), interior decorators to the next owner: Mrs
At the time of his marriage in 1759 he was described as ‘an eminent merchant of this
Morton F. Plant (Mae or Maisy, née Caldwell, widowed 1918, from 1919 Mrs William
City’ (Dublin) in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal. He later became an MP in the Irish Parliament,
Hayward, from 1954 Mrs John E. Rovensky, d. 1956), at the Plant Mansion, 5th Avenue and
attracting uncomplimentary remarks in parliamentary sketches of 1782. By that date
86th Street, New York (probably by 1918, certainly by 1927); her posthumous sale, Parke-
he may have run into financial difficulties (partly alleviated by his appointment as Clerk
Bernet Galleries, New York, 19 January 1957, lots 965 and 966
of the Quick Rents for £150 a year). In 1768, however, he had loaned money to Viscount
Kingsland, on the security of Turvey House, where he and his wife subsequently lived.
Claude Leigh (d. 1964), West Riddens, Cuckfield, West Sussex
The original building was a 15th century tower house. This was added to in the 16th century
A private collection, sold Christie’s London, 25 June 1981, lot 133; sold to another private
by Sir Patrick Barnewall. He is said to have made use of the stone from the ruinous Grace
collector, by whom sold Christie’s London, 5 July 2012, lot 33
Dieu Nunnery. T. Sadleir and P. L. Dickinson in Georgian Mansions in Ireland, Dublin, 1915,
p. 86-88, comment that it was much altered in the second quarter of the 18th century.
Birch seems to have made architectural improvements there in the early 1770s (the
date 1773 was recorded on a Venetian window), and these could well have led to the
commissioning of the present commodes. Whether they were an isolated order or part of
a larger furnishing scheme has yet to be investigated. Much relevant evidence may have
been lost in the demolition of the house itself, as recently as 1987.
Turvey House, Donabate, Co. Dublin
MAYHEW AND INCE
From 1764, Mayhew & Ince worked with Robert Adam (1728- 1792) on several notable
commissions, culminating in their ‘ability to produce very early on furniture in the most
startling advanced Neo-classical taste’ (Geoffrey Beard, Christopher Gilbert, Dictionary of
English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p.592).
The firm faithfully reproduced Adam’s furniture designs, in 1775 supplying the magnificent
Derby House commode to Edward Smith-Stanley, Lord Strange (later 12th Earl of Derby)
for his Grosvenor Square, London property. The Derby House commode is the only fully
documented Adam commode to survive, and Mayhew & Ince’s invoice for ‘A circular
Commode of fine and curious Woods very Finely inlaid with Etruscan Ornaments’ at a cost
of £84, ‘compleated from a Design of Messrs. Adams’ demonstrates the close working
relationship between designer and maker.
The firm also created their own distinctive designs in a refined and sober Neo-classical
fashion exemplified by a rectangular satinwood and marquetry commode sold from the
Countess of Portsmouth’s collection, Christie’s London, 18 May 1922, lot 81, now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (64.101.1145), and a semi-elliptical commode from
the Barbara Piasecka Johnson collection, sold Christie’s London, 9 July 1992, lot 162,
(£660,000, including premium).
The aesthetically spare decoration of this commode, a testament to the decorative
language of the Neo-classical spirit of the late 18th century, places it into a specific subgroup of commodes. Particularly striking are the large scale ‘antique’ urns, a frequent
Mayhew and Ince motif that relates to ornamentation found on a number of other
commodes attributed by Lucy Wood to Mayhew and Ince (Lucy Wood, Catalogue of
Commodes, London, 1994, pp. 223-237, nos. 26, 27 and 28).
The Mallett Commode
THE IRISH CONNECTION
Mayhew & Ince did have a small but significant Irish clientèle, including Francis Thomas
Fitzmaurice, 3rd Earl of Kerry, who commissioned the firm for the refurbishment of his
Portland Square, London, house in the early 1770s. Furthermore, a related demi-lune
commode, smaller in size but with the distinctive marquetry of Mayhew & Ince, and a
very similar pattern of squared acanthus-wrapped feet, was in the collection of James
Alexander, 1st Earl of Caledon, a wealthy Indian Nabob, who first engaged Mayhew & Ince
at his London house on Berners Street in 1773.
The early history of this commode is uncertain but it appears to have been commissioned
by the Earl’s brother-in-law, Josias Dupré, Governor of Madras, for his house in Portland
Place, but was returned to Mayhew & Ince in July 1777 for restoration before being
transferred to Caledon in Ireland. Mayhew and Ince subsequently fulfilled an exceptional
commission for the Earl at Caledon between 1785 and 1795. (H. Roberts, ‘Unequall’d
Elegance: Mayhew and Ince’s furniture for James Alexander, 1st Earl of Caledon’, Furniture
History Society, 2009, p.117).
A further link between the London partnership and Ireland is afforded by William Moore
(d.1814), cabinet-maker of Abbey Street and later Capel Street, Dublin. Moore had been
apprenticed to Mayhew & Ince before establishing his workshop in Dublin in 1779. He was
soon the foremost marqueteur in Ireland, and unsurprisingly, the Neo-classical marquetry
of Adam-derived motifs, highly characteristic of the London practice, was also adopted by
Moore. In his trade advertisements Moore particularly emphasised his ‘long experience at
Messrs. Mayhew and Ince, London’ (R. Luddy, ‘Every Article in the Inlaid Way: the furniture
of William Moore’, Irish Arts Review, 2002, vol.18, p.47).
However, only two pieces of furniture are firmly attributable to Moore, a semi-elliptical
marquetry commode supplied to William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland
in 1782, and a pianoforte, its whereabouts unknown. Other pieces in public collections are
now believed to be by Moore, including another commode, very similar to the Portland
example, in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (ibid., p.44; W.56:1 to
The Mallett Commode
3-1925).
RELATED COMMODES
Comparable examples are a single commode of smaller dimensions but with very closely
related ornamentation, The Property of the late Mrs. Robert Tritton, sold Christie’s house sale,
Godmersham Park, Kent, 6-9 June 1983, lot 138 (£30,240 including premium); its pair was
exhibited by Ronald Phillips at The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, 15-21 June 2006.
Another related pair of small demi-lune cabinets, the tambour doors with identical paterae
enclosed by bellflower swags flanked by classical urns, is in the collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Bernard M. Baruch (65.155.45, 46).
A pair of 19th century commodes, copies of the present lot, were sold anonymously, Christie’s,
London, 5 October 1972, lot 156.
ii. An advertisement for a demi-lune corner cupboard at Mallett in Country Life, 1955
i. A satinwood, harewood and marquetry cabinet attr. to Willam Moore, c. 1782 (Victoria
and Albert Museum, London)
iii. One of a pair of demi-lune cabinets in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
iv. One of a pair of harewood, satinwood and marquetry
corner cupborads, attr. William Moore, c. 1785. Formely
in the collection of Ronald McDonnell, Dublin
Literature
RESEARCH BY LUCY WOOD
ILLUSTRATIONS
i. J. Peill and The Knight of Glin, Irish Furniture (New Haven and London, 2007),
p. 164, cat. 221.
ii. Country Life, June 14th 1956.
iii. Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/
search-the-collections/120020268?img=0
iv.J. Peill and The Knight of Glin, Irish Furniture (New Haven and London, 2007),
p. 164.
RESOURCES
Beard, Geoffrey and Goodison, Judith, English Furniture 1500 - 1840,
Oxford, 1987, p.187, pl.4.
Harris, E., The Genius of Robert Adam: His Interiors. London and New Haven,
2001, p.289-292.
Lewis-Hinckley, F. , Hepplewhite, Sheraton & Regency Furniture, New York,
1987, p. 209, pl. 175, no. 348.
Nickerson, D., English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1969, pp.
66 - 67, figs. 68 - 69.
Peill, J. and The Knight of Glin, Irish Furniture (New Haven and London,
2007), pp. 162–67 and figs 220–26; p. 256, cat. 208.
Roberts, Hugh, ‘The Derby House Commode’, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 127,
No. 986 (May 1985), pp. 275–83 (pp. 280, 282, no. A.4, fig. 15)
Vernay, Arthur S., Decorations and English Interiors (New York, 1927), pl 36.
Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London W1S 4NJ
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