Carlton Hobbs LLC.
This secretaire is a rare example of the fine Austrian cabinetwork made during the first half of the 19th century. Secretaires were considered the most important type of furniture, commissioned not only for their utilitarian function, but also as conversation pieces that reflected the refinement, status, and and taste of the owner. These pieces were also the most intricately designed and challenging furniture items a cabinetmaker could produce, showcasing his skillfulness, and securing his professional reputation. By the 1820s, demand for this progressive form of writing desk had begun to wane, making the present secretaire a rare ovoid example from a brief, but exceptional, period in central European furniture design. Read more... (697 words, 8 images, estimated 2:47 mins reading time)
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Tagged 19th century, architectural, Biedermeier, cabinet, desk, ebonized, egg, oval, ovoid, penwork, secretaire, Vienna, Viennese
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Calling all mythology experts!
We are trying to decipher one of four mythological engravings on a table top, shown below in color and black & white. (The other 3 scenes represent Aurora, Apollo and Galatea.)
This one depicts a gathering of figures on the far left, watering and care of horses on the right, and two figures standing on clouds in the middle. The dark object in the background may be a chariot.
We’d love to hear any and all ideas of what mythological story or scene is represented here!
Read more... (94 words, 2 images, estimated 23 secs reading time)
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Carlton Hobbs LLC
This pair of José I jacaranda side chairs is an example of fashionable Anglophile taste in eighteenth century colonial Latin America by way of Portugal, the influence of which lasted from the 1690′s through to the development of neoclassicism in the 1780s. Elements of the chairs’ design can be found in the work of Thomas Chippendale, as published in the three editions of his Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director from 1754. Read more... (457 words, 3 images, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)
This is a preview of A Passion for English Design in Brazilian Colonial Seating
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Read the full post (457 words, 3 images, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)
The present chandelier is executed in the distinctive style of Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), perhaps the greatest German architect and designer of the nineteenth century and the leading arbiter of national aesthetic taste in his lifetime.
Carlton Hobbs LLC
Schinkel studied architecture with the brilliant Friedrich Gilly (1798-1800) and at Berlin’s Academy of Architecture (1800-02), although much of his early career was occupied in gaining a reputation as a painter. After a number of years in Italy and some time in France, he returned to Berlin in 1805 where he turned more seriously to architecture. By 1815 he had risen to become Chief Architect of the Prussian Department of Works, executing many commissions for Frederick William III and other members of the royal family. Read more... (454 words, 7 images, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)
This pair of tables, with their boldly canted corners and massive fluted legs, have a distinctive cubic parquetry top very much in the manner of Henry Hill of Marlborough. As Lucy Wood points out, “large-scale lozenge parquetry… seems to have been a specialty of Hill’s, with or without the addition of marquetry,” signaling his possible authorship of the tables.
Carlton Hobbs LLC
The tables are also interesting for their mix of carved decorative elements. The first table combines flowerheads redolent of William Kent’s Palladian oeuvre with a Chinoiserie fretted frieze evocative of Thomas Chippendale’s designs, particularly Plate LXXIII of The Gentleman and Cabinetmaker’s Director. Read more... (297 words, 4 images, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)
Carlton Hobbs LCC
This unusual, mahogany and boxwood inlaid George III elliptical side table is a 19th century English adaptation of the French console-desserte, a form akin to the sideboard used in dining rooms from the 18th century. Figure 1 depicts a Directoire elliptical mahogany console-desserte similar in design to the present table, with open shelves divided by tapering posts.
Figure 1 Read more... (147 words, 3 images, estimated 35 secs reading time)
Carlton Hobbs LLC
The design of this pair of carved faux bronze and faux porphyy torchères, possibly by Thomas Chippendale the Younger, is composed of an inventive synthesis of diverse classical elements and is strongly characteristic of the English Regency style. The form derives from the ancient Roman lamp-stand, or candelabrum, and combines elements from both bronze and marble examples of these lighting devices. Although the shapes varied, the basic elements of a candelabrum were predominantly the same, consisting of a base, a shaft and a top support. Early bronze versions usually included a base in the form of three animal feet; a shaft, slender and often fluted; and a top support, usually consisting of a socket for holding a candle or a plinth on which to place a lamp (figure 1a). Marble candelabra were formed of the same components, but were much more substantial and elaborate in decoration (figure 1b). Read more... (770 words, 6 images, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
This cabinet, with its Grecian temple-pediment and stepped plinth, was designed to serve as a shrine for the display of a number of smaller items from Thomas Hope’s collection of Etruscan and Greek cinerary urns. “Despite the fact that it has no documented history, it seems logical to speculate that this small-scale, idiosyncratic, and beautifully manufactured piece,…originally formed part of Thomas Hope’s furnishings at Duchess Street.” The projecting pilasters of its façade are hollowed with small arched recesses, while a shelf divides its central compartment. Its form resembles that of antique marble cippuschests, such as featured in an engraving of a “Roman columbarium (a chamber likened to a dovecot) for the reception of cinerary urns” illustrated in Hope’s Costume of the Ancients, 1812 (figure 1). Its pediment and arched corner acroteria are finely sculpted with whorled tendrils of acanthus foliage issuing anthemia. The latter “bas-reliefs” would have echoed the painted ornament of the red and black Etruscan and Greek terracotta vases, with which the niches were filled. Read more... (500 words, 5 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)
This is a preview of Hanging Cabinet From Thomas Hope’s ‘Third Vase Room’
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We’ve had a very interesting find recently regarding this center table from the Octagon, of the Garden Pavilion, Buckingham Palace, London.
The table, which appears to be the work of the celebrated firm of royal decorators George Morant and Sons, is of giltwood with the striking decorative form of three female monopodia joined by their outstretched wings which support the circular table top. Scrolling acanthine carving supports the body of each figure, running into the muscular form of the single zoomorphic upright terminating in a powerful claw foot, standing on a shaped triform base with concave sides. The table was illustrated in Ludwig Grüner’s The Decorations of the Garden Pavillion in the Grounds of Buckingham Palace, 1846 (below). Read more... (262 words, 3 images, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)
Carlton Hobbs has been honored to present an exceptional piece of art furniture made by the eminent conservator and ébéniste, Yannick Chastang. It is the first time Carlton Hobbs has marketed a piece by a contemporary designer, and we feel this cabinet is relevant to our collection as it embodies the artistry and quality of the Golden Age of cabinetmaking, whose final flourishing was the Art Deco period of the 1920s and 30s.
Although small pockets of high quality production still exist, this cabinet, in its conception, has an exceptional understanding of subtlety and restraint, redolent of late 18th century French design. The quality is undoubtedly informed by Mr. Chastang’s years of working on the greatest examples of 18th century Gallic pieces. Read more... (634 words, 4 images, estimated 2:32 mins reading time)
