The rectangular cocuswood cross-banded satine top above a central frieze drawer flanked to either side with three further drawers around a recess on foliate-carved cabriole legs with claw-and-ball feet, the top centre drawer bearing an excerpt from The Building News, 29 February 1884 with rendering of the table and said formally to be in the possession of the vicar of Bray and (Levetts), with label to drawer inscribed Mapledurham/Oxon/From the Collection of the/Rev. Walter Levett, Vicar of/Bray; Bought at Castle Hill/Reading, October 27th 1880;/Gerald Storett. Possibly by Gillows.
The size of the kneehole is 24.5in. high and 14.25in. wide at its widest (below the brackets).
The Building News article of 1884 with detailed illustrations is entitled ‘Sketches of Old Furniture’. Interestingly, the desk may be a product of the firm of Gillows who was producing high quality furniture in the Georgian manner as early as the 1820s. A pair of tripod tables of similar early Georgian inspiration with foliate-carved cabriole legs was sold at Christie’s, the property of a Distinguished Private Collection, 22 April 1999, lot 127. These tables conform to a design in Gillow’s Estimate Sketch Books’ for a ‘Rosewood Flower Stand’ dated 1822.
The impressive Elizabethan manor house, Mapledurham, was owned by the Blount family since it was built by Sir Michael Blount in 1588. In 1943 the family died out and the estate passed by descent to the current owner and is run by the Mapledurham Trust. There is not an obvious connection with Gerald Storett who inscribed his note from Mapledurham.
This desk comes from the John W. Kluge Morven Collection.
