A Victorian Mahogany Chippendale-Style Pedestal Desk

A very handsome and extremely fine quality Victorian mahogany Chippendale-style free-standing pedestal desk attributed to Wright and Mansfield of London, the rectangular top with a dark green tooled leather inset writing surface above three panelled frieze drawers on the front, each with a raised carved naturalistic trelliswork and original turned mahogany pulls, above three tiers of pedestals drawers, each again with their original turned pulls, the pedestals flanked either side by thin fluted chamfered panels. The back of the desk featuring the same trellised frieze with dummy drawers above similarly shaped pedestals, both of which have a single door inset with a Chinoiserie style raised carved cartouche. The pedestals on a simple stepped base resting upon brass casters
London, date circa 1875
Width 152 cm, depth 90 cm, height 76 cm.
Literature: Thomas Chippendale, “The Gentleman & Cabinet-maker’s Director”, third edition of 1762, (republished in 1966), pl. LXXXIII, illustrating a Chippendale design for a library table of comparable style, of which the left-hand side features a trellised frieze above a panelled pedestal door and to the right a panelled door with inner Chinoiserie cartouche, and pl. LXXXV, featuring a design for another comparable library table with two different trellis friezes and two alternative designs for panelled pedestal doors, and pl. LXXXI, illustrating a design for a library table with three unadorned frieze drawers above three drawers on the left hand pedestal and an alternative single door to the right pedestal which features an inner Chinoiserie cartouche.
Robert Wemyss Symonds, “English Furniture 1837-1901”, 1987, p. 164, pl. 226, illustrating a very similar large mahogany pedestal desk made by Wright and Mansfield of Bond Street, London.
The close similarity in design as well as the quality of this Victorian Chippendale-revival desk to one that is stamped Wright and Mansfield (illustrated in R. W. Symonds’ book on Victorian furniture, op.cit) enables us to firmly attribute ours to the same illustrious firm of cabinet-makers and upholsterers. Wright and Mansfield of London, were one of the leading producers of high-quality nineteenth century furniture and in particular specialised in creating pieces that emulated the styles of Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale. Our desk is also a quality piece, for instance the fine trellis work on the frieze drawers and also the Chinoiserie cartouche borders adorning the rear doors is not applied but carved in relief. Furthermore, like works by Wright and Mansfield and Chippendale before them, the desk is free-standing so that it can be used and as much admired equally from both the front and from the rear.
During the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, interest in England in past historical styles were much in vogue, especially those from the eighteenth century. Owing to the scarcity and the price of original pieces, there was a great demand for furniture makers to make pieces that looked back to the Queen Anne style as well as Sheraton, Adam and, as we see here, to works by the esteemed cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (1718-79). Chippendale, who established his cabinet-making firm in London during the mid-eighteenth century, was to become a household name soon after the appearance of the first edition of his celebrated pattern book, The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director, which was published in 1754. Thereafter the term ‘Chippendale’ was regularly used to describe English Rococo furniture inspired by its illustrated designs. The first edition contained 161 engraved plates for a wide range of domestic furniture in the Gothic, Chinese, and Rococo styles as well as a series of plain domestic pieces. A virtually identical second edition was issued in 1755, and a third enlarged and revised edition appeared in 1762. The book sold well and helped the firm attract many fashionable clients, including the actor David Garrick and members of the aristocracy including William Dalrymple, Earl of Dumfries.
Renewed interest in England of the Chippendale style began just over a century after the publication of his third edition of the Director, as evidenced when The Furniture Gazette of June 1873, printed the first of a series of designs taken from Chippendale’s Director, for which, the editor wrote, “there is now a great demand”. Furthermore, in 1878, in her book, The Art of Beauty, Mrs H. R. Haweis wrote about the “recent rage for ‘Chippendale’ and so-called ‘Queen Anne’ furniture”. She continued by saying that Chippendale’s furniture was not beautiful in the artistic sense, but only in a technical one, noting that “The heavy lyre-backed chairs with horse-hair seats, the fragile tables which seem to aim at having no legs, the straight diamond-paned book cases of mahogany, with brazen-handled drawers - useful they may all be in their way - beautiful they never can be called”. Mrs Haweis accounts for the interest taken in Chippendale-style furniture to be the “natural reaction against the modern vulgar taste in furniture to which cultivated people had been for so long accustomed”.
One of the Victorian leading furnituremakers who promoted interest in past revival pieces was the London firm of Wright and Mansfield, whose range of ‘Chippendale Furniture’, from chairs, library tables, sideboards and mirrors, was often advertised in their illustrated trade catalogues. Working as cabinet makers and upholsterers, the partnership between Alfred Thomas Wright (1840-90) and George Needham Mansfield (1828-95) was significant but only flourished for a relatively short period, roughly between 1861 and 1884. Alfred Thomas Wright, who was born in Bethnal Green, Middlesex was the son of a paper stainer, Joseph Richard Wright. From 1856 Alfred worked for and later became a junior partner to Samuel Hanson, a cabinet maker and ‘antiquarian upholsterer’ of 16 John Street (later Great Portland Street) and 106 Oxford Street. In 1858, George Needham Mansfield, the son of George Mansfield, a builder and decorator of Gray’s Inn Lane and Wigmore Street, joined the firm which then traded as Hanson, Wright and Mansfield until Hanson’s death in 1861. Thereafter the firm traded as Wright and Mansfield.
Wright and Mansfield exhibited at the London International Exhibition of 1862, where they won a first-class medal. Among many pieces, their stand included a piano made by Érard, which was painted by Pincon and Prolisch, featuring carvings by R. W. Godfrey. The piano was bought by D. C. Marjoribanks, M.P., of Guisachan House, Inverness and was part of a large commission of Adam-style furniture made by the firm, the earliest so far documented. A particular feature of this cabinet furniture was the incorporation of Wedgewood plaques, including black basalt ware and the use of Highland black cherry wood. The firm subsequently furnished the Marjoribanks family London residence Brook House (1867) and Haddo House, Aberdeenshire (during the 1880s), belonging to D. C. Majoribanks’ son in law and daughter, the 7th Earl and Countess of Aberdeen.
At the 1867 Paris Universelle Exposition, the firm showed a remarkable satinwood, marquetry, bronze and Wedgwood mounted cabinet. It was awarded a gold medal, the only time such an honour was bestowed upon an English cabinet maker, by the judges, presided over by M. du Sommerard director of the Cluny Museum, and M. Wilkinson, Administrator de Mobilier de la Courrone. The medal was presented personally to Wright & Mansfield by the Emperor Napoleon III. The cabinet was purchased by the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) for the extraordinary sum, in those days, of £800. It remains in their possession today.
The firm’s listing in the 1871 Post Office Directory recorded addresses at 104 New Bond Street, 3 Great Portland Street & 6 Ridinghouse Street, London. A drawing room in the style of ‘the Adam brothers’ shown at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition was awarded a medal and was most favourably commented upon in the journals of the day. In addition to the above, other examples of the firm’s work include a satinwood display cabinet of about 1870, formerly in the Handley-Read collection, at the Cecil Higgins Arts Gallery and Museum, Bedford and a painted satinwood armchair with cane seat made in about 1880, now in the V&A, London.
Haddo House was probably Wright and Mansfield’s last major commission, and it is unlikely it was completely finished before the partnership was formally dissolved in December 1884. Nevertheless, the firm continued to advertise until 1885/6 and were recorded in the Furniture Gazette Classified List of the Furniture, Upholstery and Allied Trades, 1886, as ‘Art Furniture Manufacturers and Merchants’. The reasons for the firm’s dissolution are unclear, but Wright was probably unwell by this time and there may have been financial mismanagement because Wright only left £312 8s 3d at his death in 1890. Wright and Mansfield furniture was expensive and perhaps unaffordable to all but the very rich. Furthermore, the firm had invested considerable capital in a collection of important specimens used as models for their reproduction furniture which The Cabinet Maker & Art Furnisher (1st July 1887) described as ‘[equal to] the real work of the best makers, Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite, Adam and Richardson [which was] becoming scarcer in auction rooms, and fetch[ing] high prices’. Their stock was dispersed in two sales conducted by Phillips, Son and Neale in June 1886 and June 1887. At the latter auction, the South Kensington Museum, V&A, acquired a selection of marquetry panels, pilasters, a Pembroke table and pair of Sheraton style chairs.
George Mansfield, with his brother, attempted to carry on the business as before, buying stock from the 1886 sale, but was forced to close in 1887 and the premises was sold. George, of Myrtle Cottage, Littlewick Green, Berkshire, died in 1895 on the Isle of Wight, leaving effects to the value of £1,030 to his wife, Augusta Maria. Wright and Mansfield’s name obviously held weight even after it had closed its business since when George Frederick Dean of Davies Street, London, a designer and dealer in the fine and decorative arts, placed an advertisement in The Connoisseur, in 1902, he noted he had been the ‘designer and adviser to the late firms of Messrs. Wright & Mansfield and Messrs. Edwards & Roberts’.