A George II Figured Walnut Bureau on Stand, Circa 1730

Percival D. Griffiths, by 1929;

Mallett & Son, London by 1943;

Captain and Mrs Hugh Vivian, Chantry Acre, Bishopston, Swansea;

Mallams Oxford, 28 February 2014, lot 22;

Chris Jussel, Mystic, Connecticut

R. W. Symonds, English Furniture from Charles II to George II, London 1929, p.139 fig. 85

Antique Collector May/June 1950, p.109-111

Christian Jussel and William DeGregorio, English Furniture 1680-1760

The Percival D. Griffiths Collection, London and New Haven 2023, Vol. I no. F29 p. 77

Percival D Griffiths FSA (1862-1937) assembled what is generally considered one of the greatest 20th century collections of historic English furniture. A London-born chartered accountant, Griffiths spent his early career in the United States establishing an American presence of what would become the global firm Deloitte. In 1899 he returned to England and acquired an early 18th-century house, Sandridgebury, near St Alban's, Hertfordshire, where he lived without electricity and began collecting antique furniture. From 1908 he was advised by the architect and eminent furniture historian Robert Wemyss Symonds (1889-1958), who illustrated many of Griffiths' works as representative examples in his publications. Griffiths acquired primarily walnut and mahogany furniture from the period 1680-1760, and followed Symonds's recommendation of focussing more on colour, patina, condition and quality of materials and workmanship than on historic provenance and makers' attributions, an approach that continues to be highly influential today. The Griffiths collection remains the most celebrated and consummate example of what has become known as the 'Symonds Tradition' of collecting.

Following his death, Griffiths' collection was dispersed, and many important items of furniture and needlework were acquired by Judge Irwin Untermyer in New York, who donated or bequeathed the majority of his works to the Metropolitan Museum, including a very similar walnut bureau that exceptionally retains an original integral dressing mirror (64.101.1109; fig.1). Analysis of the present lot indicates it was never fitted with a similar mirror.

Symonds illustrated this work as figure 85 in his 1929 study English Furniture from Charles II to George II, observing 'the drawer linings of this piece are mahogany, an unusual feature are the turned wood knob handles, which are original'.