Case No 1 (2009-10): A GILTWOOD TABLE BY JOSEPH PERFETTI
Meets Waverley criteria two and three
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.
Brief Description
A table of carved and gilt pine and limewood, with a later top of Korgon(?) porphyry,
H. 91.5 x W. 124.5 x D. 62.3 cm. Designed by Robert Adam (1728–1792), the
manufacture attributed to Joseph Perfetti (fl. 1760–78 or later), c. 1775–80. The
frame was originally painted, and traces of paint survive on the interior; how far the
paint survives beneath the gilding has not been ascertained. Some of the carving
may have been restored, perhaps including most of the ribbons in the apron, which
are painted a lighter grey on the back face than the rest of the frame.
2.
Context
Provenance
The table is one of a pair, which were almost certainly supplied to Henry, Lord
Apsley, 2nd Earl Bathurst from 1775 (1714-1794), for Apsley House. The
identification is based on their correspondence to a drawing by Robert Adam,
inscribed ‘Table for Lady Bathurst, Apsley House’; and the inscription makes it clear
that they were made after Lord Apsley’s inheritance of the earldom in September
1775. The tables’ subsequent history is uncertain: they were possibly disposed of
by the Marquess Wellesley after he bought Apsley House from the 3 rd Earl Bathurst
in 1805, or by his brother the 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), who purchased
the house in 1816 and began to refurbish it in the late 1820s. But there is some
evidence to suggest that they were retained at Apsley House during the 1 st Duke’s
lifetime (discussed below). They are not recorded in inventories of Apsley House
taken in 1854 and 1857, so may have been sold, or removed to Stratfield Saye,
after the Duke’s death in 1852.
Literature
Eileen Harris: ‘Adam at No 1 London’, Country Life, Vol. CXLV, No. 44 (November
1, 2001), 98–101 (pp. 100 (ill.), 101).
3.
Waverley criteria
The export of the table is objected to on criteria 2 and 3: it is a rare survival from
one of Robert Adam’s most important town-house commissions, now largely
overlaid by the early 19th-century refit for the Duke of Wellington –when the table
too was probably redecorated and equipped with its present top. Its aesthetic
importance lies partly in Adam’s design, partly in the exceptional quality of the
carving. Its importance for study is enhanced by the technical features that allow us
to attribute its manufacture to Joseph Perfetti, one of the group of craftsmen
employed by Adam, but of whom little other work is so far known.
DETAILED CASE
1.
Detailed description of item, and comments.
The table (Fig. 1) is one of a pair, identified with Robert Adam’s commission to
decorate Apsley House on the strength of the drawing (Fig. 2) showing one leg and
the adjacent section of the table’s frieze and apron, inscribed ‘Table for Lady
Bathurst, Apsley House’ (Soane Museum, Adam Drawings 49/44). Robert Adam
built Apsley House between 1771 and 1778, a period that coincided with Lord
Apsley’s term as Lord Chancellor. A number of ceilings, chimney pieces and
doorcase friezes in the State Apartments on the first floor survive, but from 1819
onwards Benjamin Dean Wyatt (1775–1855) carried out extensive alterations for the
1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), culminating in the creation of the Waterloo
Gallery, 1828–30. A dish in the Prussian Service (Fig. 3), displayed at Apsley
House, depicts the house before these alterations. Only three rooms on the first
floor – now called the Yellow Drawing Room, the Portico Drawing Room and the
Piccadilly Room – still have the dimensions laid out by Adam.
The table’s manufacture is attributed to the carver and gilder Joseph Perfetti of St
Marylebone, London, who from 1762 undertook commissions for the 2nd Earl of
Shelburne at Lansdowne House, London, for John Parker (a close friend of Lord
Shelburne’s) at Saltram, Devon, and for Henry Knight at Tythegston Court,
Glamorganshire. His last recorded work was some frames supplied to Saltram on 4
February 1778, for which John Parker paid £8 17s. (at an unspecified date) to ‘Mrs
Perfetti’ – possibly his widow.1
Perfetti’s earlier work for Saltram includes two pairs of tables closely related to the
present examples. On 29 January 1771 Parker paid him £41 1s. ‘for table frames
for the Great Room Saloon’, and on 31 March 1772 £41 ‘for Table Frames in the
Velvet Room’.2 The first pair (Fig. 4) relate to an Adam design of 1768 for ‘a Table
Frame for his Grace the Archbishop of York’ (Soane Drawings 17/11; Fig. 5), but as
Eileen Harris has well argued, the differences suggest that they were made without
direct access to Adam’s drawing.3 For the second pair (Fig. 6), however, Adam
supplied a design directly to Parker (Soane Drawings 20/70; Fig. 7). So the
similarity of design to the present table is not in itself a reason to attribute this one
also to Perfetti. Shared aspects of manufacture, however, strongly indicate that he
was responsible. The applicant has noted that the carved swags on the 1772
Saltram tables and the present table have been cut with a fret-saw, and are all
formed from sections of lime wood of the same length. Still more idiosyncratic is the
use of shaped iron bars to secure the swags (Fig. 8) – formed to the same outline
and screwed into the back face of the swags and of the frieze above. This usage is
1
Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert (eds), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660–1840
(Leeds, 1986), p. 690. The payment may have been made some years later, so Perfetti may well
have lived beyond 1778.
2
Eileen Harris, The Furniture of Robert Adam (London, 1963), p. 69 and pls 21 and 22 (inversely
numbered to the captions).
3
Ibid. See also Eileen Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam: His Interiors (London, 2001), p. 237.
common to both pairs of tables at Saltram and the Apsley House table under
consideration.
Unlike the Saltram pieces, however, the present table was originally painted, not
gilded, as indicated in Adam’s drawing and evinced in traces surviving on the
interior (Fig. 9). Adam’s drawing also shows a slab of, seemingly, scagliola or Bossiwork, which would have combined very successfully with the colourful painted
frame.
The design in Fig. 2 is one of about twenty-six surviving furniture designs by Adam
for Apsley House – some of them dated, between 31 January 1778 and 19 June
1779, and some designated for specific rooms. Adam’s floor plans also survive, with
room names shown for the upper ground floor and first floor (Figs 10–12).
The surviving evidence – from the extant designs and the house as it now stands –
presents unanswered questions about the date and original site of this pair of
tables. (No inventory of this period, which might throw light on the matter, has been
traced.) The normal placement of such a pair would be on the piers of a threewindowed wall in one room. Adam’s floor plans show only three three-bay rooms:
the Dining Parlour and the Drawing Room (or Great Drawing Room) on the Parlour
Storey (upper ground floor; Fig. 10), and the Second Drawing Room on the
Principal Storey (first floor; Fig. 11).4 The Dining Parlour may confidently be
excluded: these delicate tables, originally painted, would have been highly
unsuitable for a dining room. Moreover, the inscription ‘for Lady Bathurst’ suggests
the design was intended for a room in her domain. One of the two drawing rooms is
much more likely. These were of the same shape and size, placed one above the
other. B. D. Wyatt’s architectural changes of the 1820s have obscured the width of
the original piers on the west walls of both rooms. But as far as can be judged from
Adam’s plans, the piers could easily have accommodated the tables – and might
indeed have rather dwarfed them.
For both drawing rooms, however, Adam’s designs show semi-circular, not
rectangular, pier furniture: ‘a slab for the Tables in the Great Drawing Room’, dated
‘19th June 1779’ (Soane Drawings 17/46; Fig. 13); and ‘Commode[s] for the second
Drawing room at Apsley House’, dated ‘June 1779’ (Soane Drawings 17/43; Fig.
14). One possible explanation is that Lady Bathurst rejected the design and that it
was executed for a different client; but this is unlikely in view of the high level of
detail proposed in the drawing (Fig. 2), suggesting a late stage in the design
process – a refinement to a design that had already been agreed in principle.
Another possibility is that the tables were made for one of the more intimate rooms
on the second storey, for which no room names are marked on Adam’s plan (Fig.
12). However, since none of these rooms has a three-windowed wall, this seems
improbable.
4
Previously it has been suggested that the present table was made for the Bedroom (Eileen Harris,
loc. cit. (see Literature)). The applicant has made the alternative proposal of the north pier of the
third Drawing Room (also known as ‘the Toilet Room’ and ‘Lady Bathurst’s Dressing Room’). Both of
these rooms, however, had only single piers, so could not have accommodated the pair of tables in
the conventional arrangement.
A third possibility is that this design superseded one of the 1779 designs for pier
furniture in the drawing rooms, but this too seems rather unlikely, for the
semicircular designs were certainly the more advanced stylistically. Fourthly, it is
possible that the rectangular tables were designed and manufactured soon after
September 1775, and themselves displaced within a few years by the semicircular
pieces in one of the drawing rooms. This explanation is more plausible, bringing the
tables much closer in date to the most directly comparable examples in Adam’s
repertoire, designed in 1768 and 1771 (discussed above). It is also consistent with
the known history of the two drawing rooms’ creation: Adam designed chimneypieces for both rooms in 1774 (Soane Drawings 23/57 and 23/61), and the ceiling of
the Second Drawing Room on 6 April 1775 (Soane Drawings 14/13). So he could
well have been designing pier furniture for either room soon afterwards.
If the tables were displaced from their original site within a few years of being made,
they may well subsequently have been deployed opportunistically in another room
or rooms. That they were retained by the Duke of Wellington has been suggested
because the bluish-grey porphyry of their present slabs appears to match the
Korgon porphyry in a pair of monumental candelabra in the Waterloo Gallery (Fig.
16). These formed part of a diplomatic gift presented to the Duke by Tsar Nicholas I,
just before his coronation in August 1826, together with three mirror frames, a pair
of malachite pier tables and a malachite vase. Whether any slabs of Korgon
porphyry were also included in the gift has yet to be investigated.5 The tables may
well have been gilded at the same time as the slabs were replaced, for the grey
porphyry would have looked very incongruous with the polychrome frames. Their
history of alteration can only be surmised, however, for they cannot be matched
with any item in the 1854 and 1857 inventories of Apsley House. They may have
been sold, or moved to Stratfield Saye, following the 1st Duke’s death in 1852.
2.
Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item(s).
This table is one of very few pieces that can now be associated with one of Robert
Adam’s most important town house commissions. The other major survivals include
two pairs of torchères in private collections (one pair with Blairman’s in 1988, the
other with Mallett’s in 2000). The table belongs to Adam’s ‘mature style’, as
identified by Eileen Harris – lighter and more delicate than his still rather Kentian
work of the 1760s, but more vivacious than the highly refined, almost standardized
work of the 1780s.6 Saltram, Harewood House, Osterley, and 20 St James’s Square
are other commissions from this period. This piece very probably belonged
subsequently to the most famous incumbent at Apsley House, the Duke of
Wellington, who transformed the interiors, and may well also have been responsible
for the transformation of the table – replacing its painted decoration with gilding, and
its (apparently) scagliola top with grey porphyry, possibly a gift from the Tsar. While
Natalya Guseva and Igor Sychov, ‘Diplomatic gifts from Tsar Nicholas of Russia to the Duke of
Wellington’, Apollo, Vol. CVLII, No. 467 (Jan 2001), pp, 34–40. The list of items gifted – not fully
transcribed in the article – is probably ‘Fond 468 (St Petersburg, Russian Historical State Archive),
referred to in notes 12, 15 and 17.
5
6
Harris, The Furniture of Robert Adam (see note 2), p. 19.
the loss of its original condition is in one sense regrettable, its present appearance
may reflect a distinguished history, and the personal taste of the Iron Duke.
Notwithstanding the new gilding, the refinement of Perfetti’s carving is still
conspicuous. Perfetti was one of the ‘regiment of artificers’ employed by Adam, but
much less well known than most. His only other identified work is the comparable
tables at Saltram – one pair representing his direct execution of a design supplied
by Adam, the other perhaps his own adaptation of an Adam design. The
idiosyncratic technical features found to be common to all three models, together
with the high quality of his carving, may with further research enable other pieces to
be attributed to his hand or workshop.
Lucy Wood
Senior Curator, Furniture Textiles and Fashion Department
Victoria & Albert Museum
Case prepared with the assistance of James Yorke
20 January 2009
Captions
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
The table under review, designed by Robert Adam for Apsley House, c.
1775–80, the manufacture attributed to Joseph Perfetti.
Robert Adam, design for a ‘Table for lady Bathurst, Apsley House’,
c. 1775–77 or c. 1780. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
View of Apsley House before alterations carried out by B. D. Wyatt in the
1820s, detail of a plate in the Prussian Porcelain Service, c. 1818.
One of a pair of giltwood tables made by Joseph Perfetti for the ‘Great
Room Saloon’ at Saltram in 1771.
Robert Adam, ‘Design of a Table Frame for His Grace the Archbishop of
York’, May 1768. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
One of a pair of giltwood tables made by Joseph Perfetti for the ‘Velvet
Drawing Room’ at Saltram in 1772.
Robert Adam, design for ‘Glass & Table frame for John Parker Esqr.’,
1771. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
A detail of the table in Fig. 1, showing the iron bars screwed to the swags
to secure them to the frame.
A detail of the table in Fig. 1, showing traces of the original paint on the
inside of the frame, at the top of the legs.
Robert Adam, plan of the Parlour Storey (upper ground floor) at Apsley
House, n.d. [c. 1771?]. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Robert Adam, plan of the Principal Storey (first floor) at Apsley House,
1771. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Robert Adam, plan of the ‘2 pair Stairs floor’ (second floor) at Apsley
House, n.d. [c. 1771?]. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Robert Adam, ‘Design of a slab for the Tables in the Great Drawing Room
at Apsley House’, 19 June 1779. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Robert Adam, design for ‘Commode for the second Drawing room at
Apsley House’, June 1779. Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Robert Adam: Robert Adam, ‘Design for a Commode for the 2nd Drawing
Room at Apsley House, 10th October 1777.
A pair of candelabra of Korgon porphyry in the Waterloo Gallery at Apsley
House; presented by Tsar Nicholas I to the Duke of Wellington in 1826.