A satinwood Sheraton Revival breakfront marquetry commode

An Exceptional Edwardian Satinwood Commode, Reproducing Thomas Chippendale’s Piece-Known as the Diana and Minerva Commode-Supplied to the Lascelles Family at Harewood House

A satinwood Sheraton Revival breakfront marquetry commode, the shaped marble top above one long drawer flanked by two concave drawers decorated with inlaid festoons, all above a recessed, arched central drawer and concave side-cupboard doors, decorated in fruitwood and hardwood marquetry with crossbanding, bellflower garlands and classical motifs centred on roundels depicting Diane and Minerva with mother-pearl and bone detailing, applied with ormolu mounts and raised on six carved square-section legs, the locks on one drawer marked ‘Hobbs & Co’. English, circa 1900.

Ivory reference number: A89CGW1D

Published: Christopher Payne,  ‘British Furniture 1820-1920: The Luxury Market.’ Woodbridge, 2023, p. 436, pl. 8.89.

Acknowledged as one of Chippendale’s finest documented pieces, the Diana and Minerva commode was supplied for the State Bedroom at Harewood House in 1773.

Our example faithfully reproduces the spirit and decorative impact of Chippendale’s original-including the wonderful inlaid ivory panels-whilst adding a very practical marble top.

For a very similar commode see the 1900 painting ‘Sir George Sitwell, Lady Ida Sitwell and Family’ by John Singer Sargent. The locksmiths’ company of Hobbs & Co of London was actually founded by an American salesman and inventor for Jones & Newell of New York. Boston born Alfred Charles Hobbs (1812-1891) created quite a stir at the Great Exhibition of 1851 when he picked the ‘impregnable’ locks of both Bramah and Chubb! Making the most of his fame, he registered his own company, Hobbs and Co., in 1852. With various partners, the company continued in Cheapside for the next 90 years, although Hobbs himself returned to the Untied State in 1860.

Harewood House in Yorkshire is one of the Treasure Houses of Britain and one of the finest examples of the harmonious concert of architecture, fine art and decorative arts in the English country house tradition. The house was made for Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, by the admirable triumvirate comprising the architect Robert Adam, the landscape gardener Capability Brown and the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, each the reigning kings of their respective art forms in the 1760s. One piece by Chippendale set the Baron Harewood back a cool £86 and was invoiced as “A very large rich Commode with exceeding fine Antique Ornaments curiously inlaid with various fine woods […] with Diana and Minerva and their Emblems Curiously inlaid & Engraved”.1 This was the Diana and Minerva commode, one of Chippendale’s greatest works and still on public display in Harewood’s State Bedroom (HHTF:1997.163). Given the iconic status of this commode, firmly attributed to the greatest of English furniture makers during its eighteenth-century ‘golden age’, it is unsurprising that the strongly historicist popular taste at the fin-de-siècle sought to reproduce it in the present lot. In late Victorian and Edwardian interiors, the Arts and Crafts movement had brought a strong current of almost rustic simplicity to much of furniture design, but the admiration for the splendid furniture of the Georgian period remained fervent and was a visible presence in the grand interiors of the period. The quality of the reproduction on the present lot is impressive and an example of the strong calibre of craftsmen that were operating in many art furniture workshops of the late nineteenth century. Beyond the differences in colouring to the veneers, there are some divergences from the design of the original Minerva commode that are observable on this fin-de-siècle copy – the shallower dimensions mean the the side panels are thinner and so the original foliate square is more rectangular, and the typically English marquetry top is replaced with a marble one, more characteristic of French commodes in the period.