Mr John Parry, sold Christie’s, London, The John Parry Collection, 24th March 2010, lot 38, GBP £70,000
Publications
A. Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture: 1715-1740 (Woodbridge 2009), p.101, figs. 3:14-5
An exceptional George II walnut and burr walnut chest, the quartered cross and feather-banded ovolo-bead-moulded top with re-entrant corners above a green baize-lined slide, two short drawers simulated as three, and three long graduated drawers, all feather-banded with carcase cockbeading, one side with a fitted pen and ink drawer, the other with a simulated drawer, both beaded, the sides also with carrying handles, the back of the chest veneered, raised on ovolo-moulded base and shaped bracket feet, the handles and shilling plate escutcheons original
The present chest is of exceptional quality, tightly constructed. The carcase cockbeads and thin-railed second-phase construction suggest a date of 1730-40. As characteristic of chests after 1730 until 1740, the top features an ovolo-bead moulding around the whole edge and the base an ovolo base moulding.
The slide and fitted pen drawer indicate that the chest was intended for writing as well as use as a dressing table. The four re-entrant corners are a refinement. The veneers are beautifully figured and the chest retains wonderful colour and patina.
The chest has passed through the hands of several notable connoisseurs of English furniture, one of them the important dealer Ronald A. Lee and another the private collector John Parry, who held it in such high regard that it was not sold in his first collection sale at Christie’s in April 1997 but retained to form ‘the nucleus of the present collection’, sold at Christie’s in March 2010.