114 / 220
112
266
A PAIR OF GEORGE III INLAID MAHOGANY
DINING ROOM PEDESTALS, after a design
by gillows
with surmounted reeded lidded urns, with bell finials
and having lead lining on a square base with single panel
door enclosing a shelved interior, decorated with fluted
banding, raised on platform base. 173cm high, 46 x 46cm
Provenance: They appear in the Courtown, Hamilton &
Hamilton sale catalogue for the Drummonds as lot 436,
11/6/1963 and were illustrated in that catalogue.
€15,000 - 20,000
These restrained neo-classical urns on Roman pedestals correspond closely
to a design by Gillows of 1788, and are very like known executed examples
attributed to the same firm.
Used as cisterns or cutlery boxes they appealed to the refined taste of the
late 18th Century and indeed came to be regarded as primarily ornamental.
They were difficult to make and therefore always expensive. Quoted by
S.Stuart in Gillows of Lancaster and London (2008). Gillows himself, writing
to a client states, “if you knew the time, expense and difficulty in making
them…as well as the waste of wood and cost of materials, you would have a
different idea of their value”.
Added to this, many did not survive everyday use, were separated, also from
their pedestals, and so it is exceptional to find a pair such as this.
A design by Gillows
The 1963 auction catalogue for the Drummond family