10 17th April 2010
london selection
Another chance to test walnut
POST-Parry, there will be another opportunity to test the market when a second core of early walnut comes up for sale as part of the collection of the late Francis Egerton at Sotheby’s Bond Street rooms on April 28.
Francis Egerton was the leading light behind Bond Street dealership Mallett for well over a quarter of a century from 1947 until his retirement in 1983. He shared the prescient decorating tastes of
John Fowler and Nancy Lancaster and carried the look and style he exhibited at Mallett into his own collection. Or perhaps it was the other way
round? Back in his undergraduate days, he spent the then huge sum of £100 on a 1740’s walnut stool that had formerly been in the Percival Griffiths collection, a truly resonant provenance.
He kept the stool as he added to a collection of simple early Georgian wood and gilt gesso pieces with strong design lines, that furnished his successive homes, ending up at The Hermitage, the Dorset house built for his retirement by Quinlan Terry. After his death, Egerton left this collection to his friend and fellow Mallett executive Peter Maitland, who incorporated it into Abbey House Witchampton, also in Dorset.
Left: probably Francis Egerton’s first walnut purchase, he bought this c.1740 upholstered stool when he was an undergraduate. Sotheby’s have estimated it at £4000-6000.
Above left: this pair of solid ivory Anglo- Indian side chairs of c.1780 used to sit in the bathroom at The Hermitage, Francis Egerton’s Quinlan Terry-designed Dorset home. They are estimated at £6000- 9000 in Sotheby’s sale of the Francis Egerton/Peter Maitland Collection on April 28. Above right: a 2ft 5in (75cm) wide burr walnut side table of c.1735 estimated at £12,000-18,000 at Sotheby’s.
It is Maitland’s death last year that has
brought the house and contents to market. The bulk of the 150 lots on offer at Sotheby’s, and the lion’s share in value, come from Francis Egerton (Peter Maitland has supplied more decorative touches). They include that youthful purchase, the walnut stool upholstered with contemporary needlework to the drop-in seat, now estimated at £4000- 6000, plus many other pieces of walnut seat and case furniture and numerous small tables, including the particularly well-coloured burr walnut example shown
here with its acanthus-headed cabrioles. The Egerton/Maitland collection may be big on restrained early Georgian pieces, but there is room for the more decorative and the exotic as well. There are a dozen 17th and early 18th century embroidered English samplers that decorated the bedrooms and passages of Francis Egerton’s London home and are mostly guided here at around £400-500 apiece, or the pair of Anglo-Indian solid ivory chairs made in Murshidabad around 1780, also pictured, that graced the bathroom of The Hermitage.
Samuel John Peploe
Still Life with Tulips (detail)
ESTIMATE £300,000-500,000
Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell
Florian’s Café, Venice (detail)
ESTIMATE £150,000-250,000
George Leslie Hunter
Chrysanthemums (detail)
ESTIMATE £200,000-300,000
The Scottish Sale
AUCTION IN LONDON 22 APRIL 2010 I ENQUIRIES +44 (0)20 7293 5718 I SOTHEBYS.COM
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