A fine late George III satinwood and snakewood secretaire cabinet, attributed to George Simson of London

A fine late George III satinwood and snakewood secretaire cabinet, attributed to George Simson of London, of rectangular form, the upper section with a pair of glazed doors with fine gothic astragal glazing bars enclosing a single shelf, above a pull-out secretaire drawer fitted with three pigeonholes and a series of small drawers, all raised on four slender square tapering legs with a shaped undertier or platform stretcher echoing the kneehole arch above, decorated with contrasting panels of finely figured snakewood, purpleheart and ebonised stringing.  English, circa 1790.

Footnote: George Simson (1757-1840) traded from a shop at No. 19 St Paul’s Churchyard, London.  Surviving labelled pieces demonstrate that Simson made a very wide range of pieces from cutlery boxes to wardrobes and everything in between.  His customers included the Grimston family (Gorhambury House in Hertfordshire) and the 2^nd Viscount Palmerston, probably for furniture supplied to Broadlands House in Hampshire.  It may well be that much of Simson’s business was conducted through middlemen and retailers which would make tracing commissions all the more difficult.  What is beyond dispute is that the quality of Simson’s output was consistently high and this piece, with its particularly exotic veneers, is remarkable even in that context.

Our attribution rests on the similarity of these pieces to labelled pieces made by Simson and illustrated in Christopher Gilbert’s Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840 (1996), pp. 422-431.  A very similar piece, lacking the undertier, was sold at Christie’s on the 18^th of November 1993.