BY MARSH & TATHAM, CIRCA 1810

This 'Roman' mahogany and bronzed centre table by Marsh & Tatham, the celebrated ‘Royal’ cabinet-making firm, is part of an extensive Regency refurbishment undertaken by Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles (1764-1814) at Harewood House, Yorkshire in the first decade of the 19th century. It was probably supplied for the Egyptian Hall at Harewood, and was possibly accompanied by a pair of closely related tables originally from Harewood, subsequently moved to Chesterfield House, London and now in the Banqueting Room at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (1), and a pair of cross-frame stools that have remained at Harewood, both of which have virtually identical lion-head masks, and were also probably supplied by Marsh & Tatham.

CHARLES HEATHCOTE TATHAM (1772-1843)

The influence of Charles Heathcote Tatham (1772-1842) and his series of sketches of fragments of marble ‘found in excavations among the ruins of Rome’, compiled in 1799 in Etchings, representing the best examples of ancient ornamental architecture drawn from the originals in Rome, and other parts of Italy, during the years 1794, 1795 and 1796, is strikingly evident in the design of this centre table (2). C.H. Tatham, the younger brother of Thomas Tatham, who was a partner in the cabinet-making firm Marsh & Tatham of 13 Mount Street, intended these drawings to be used by designers, particularly the Prince of Wales’s architect at Carlton House, London (and later the Royal Pavilion), Henry Holland (1745-1806), who employed C.H. Tatham from 1788, and had financed his tour to Italy in the 1790s. In the Preface to Etchings, C.H. Tatham stated: ‘I am desirous to furnish the Artist with approved Models on which he may exercise his Genius…’. C.H. Tatham’s sketches inspired the connoisseur Thomas Hope (1769-1831), a member of the Society of Dilettanti, because a comparable pair of side tables could be found in the Aurora Room in Hope’s mansion/museum in Duchess Street, illustrated in its guide, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807); one of the Hope tables is now at the Huntingdon Library, Cambridge (3). A year later, another of the Regency's most important furniture designers George Smith (1786-1826) also included similar lion-monopodia on a ‘Library Table’ in his Collection of Designs for Household Furniture (1808), plate 87.

The distinctive and idiosyncratic carving of the lion’s head masks on this centre table is virtually identical to that found on a pair of side tables in the Banqueting Room at the Royal Pavilion (4). Similarly, to the table offered here, the Royal Pavilion tables were originally in the collection at Harewood House, Yorkshire (5), thus raising the tantalising possibility that the table offered here and the Pavilion tables were en suite. The motif on the frieze depicting lions drinking from a trough on the Royal Pavilion tables derives from plate 14, no. 3, of Hope’s Household Furniture. The same ornamentation occurs on a pair of bookcases supplied by the contemporaneous furniture-maker George Bullock (1777-1818) for Napoleon’s use at Longwood House, St. Helena, in circa 1815 (6). Interestingly, this table and the Royal Pavilion tables relate to one illustrated by W.H. Pyne in 1819 in ‘The Circular Room’ at Carlton House (7).

MARSH & TATHAM

When Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles embarked on a Regency refurbishment of part of the family seat, Harewood House, Yorkshire, which included the creation of an ‘Egyptian Hall’, it was natural he should turn to Marsh & Tatham, not only because of the work they had undertaken for the Prince of Wales (8), but also due to the important commissions for members of the Prince’s circle, such as Samuel Whitbread II at Southill, Bedfordshire between 1796–circa 1807 and John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire in 1804.

GEORGE TROLLOPE & SONS

It is likely that the marble top was supplied by George Trollope & Sons, who were registered under this name in 1843 and are recorded in West Halkin Street, Belgrave Square, London by 1864. They undertook large-scale refurbishments of residential property, including Harewood House, and supplied furniture to the nobility and wealthy individuals. The firm was one of the most important in the 1860s, on a par with Holland & Sons, exhibiting at several of the International Exhibitions.

(1) The table, which is now at Brighton Pavilion is illustrated at Chesterfield House in The Furnishing Trades' Organiser, 'The Furnishing of Chesterfield House', March 1922, p 198.
(2) Plates 104, 123
(3) Plate 15, nos. 1 and 3; plate 32, no. 1. The Huntingdon table was later at Hope’s Italianate villa, Deepdene, Surrey; by descent Lord Francis Hope Pelham-Clinton-Hope, sold Humbert & Flint 14 September 1917, lot 825 (a pair), and later, Christie’s, London, 7 July 1994, lot 131; acquired by H. Blairman & Sons, from whom acquired by Huntingdon (see: ed. D. Watkin, P. Hewat-Jaboor, Thomas Hope: Regency Designer, New Haven and London, 2008, p. 380, no. 69).
(4) Museum nos. DA 340437/8.
(5) Sold Christie’s, London, 28 June 1951, lots 67 and 68 to Blairman, and thence to Clifford Musgrave, Director of the Royal Pavilion until 1968.
(6) Illustrated in M. Levy, Napoleon in Exile, Leeds, 1998, p. 70, fig. 53, reproduced from The Connoisseur, September 1920.
(7) The history of the royal residences of Windsor Castle, St. James's Palace, Carlton House, and Frogmore, London, 1819.
(8) For examples of some of the furniture supplied by Marsh & Tatham to Carlton House, see: RCIN 357; RCIN 45356; RCIN 45105; RCIN 36964.