£8,750
Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art | 666
Auction: Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art
the cavetto and scrolled cornice above chamfered bedposts, the scrolled; with a later divan; covered in red silk damask with silk trimmings and similar hangings, and a
Provenance: Supplied to Sir William Pearson, later 2nd Viscount Cowdray, for Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire
Purchased Christie's 9 March 2000, lot 71
Note: The bed's French style derives from the velvet state bed, conceived in the William III 'Louis Quatorze' style that was popularised by Daniel Marot (d. 1752), and supplied about 1704 for Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire. The present lot was probably made by the firm Lenygon & Morant, who were established in Old Burlington St in 1915, after the purchase of Dunecht House in 1909 by Sir Weetman Pearson, later Baron Cowdray (1910) and Viscount Cowdray (d. 1927). Baron Cowdray employed the architect Aston Webb to aggrandise Dunecht House and it is likely the bed was part of this reburbishment. (M. Hall, 'Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire,' Country Life, 15 August 1991, pp. 54-57 and 22 August 1991, pp. 40-43). The accompanying heraldic head-cloth [not photographed with the bed] is in the 'Louis Quatorze' antique or arabesque fashion, and has a pearly white ground polychromed with flowered Roman acanthus and golden ribbon trellis. This frames a beribboned palm-and-laurel enriched escutcheon that displays a three-barred red, white and gold armorial in a lozenged compartment. Venus-shells embellish its baldequin and spandrels as well as the escutcheon pedestal, which is garlanded and accompanied by convulvulus-entwined roses and large 'Indian'/ Chinese flowers.