A George III Satinwood, Tulipwood, Kingwood, Amaranth and Stained Sycamore Marquetry Demilune Side Table, Attributed to William Moore of Dublin, Circa 1780

Devenish & Company, New York, October 2000

Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, London 14-20 June 2000; illustrated in the fair catalogue

In Ireland, William Moore has been described by the Knight of Glin as 'by far the most important cabinet-maker who reflected the new taste for neo-classicism and the Adam style' (The Knight of Glin and James Peill, Irish Furniture, London 2007, p.162). Probably from a family of cabinetmakers and possibly the son of William Moore, cabinetmaker of Inns Quay and Charles Street who died in 1759, Moore appears to have attended the School of Landscape and Ornament Drawing at the Dublin Society of Drawing Schools in 1768, following which he transferred to London, where he apprenticed in the workshop of the preeminent cabinetmakers Ince and Mayhew, leading exponents of the Adam style in furniture design with a particular specialty in inlaid work, and whose clients included the most important patrons of later Georgian England, among them the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Beaufort, Bedford and Devonshire, Viscount Palmerston and Warren Hastings.

Moore returned to Ireland in c.1777 to set up on his own cabinetmaking business, specialising in marquetry furniture and was recorded at 22 Abbey Street in Dublin by 1779. On 10 April 1782 the Dublin Evening Post published an advertisement for Moore's 'The Inlaid Cabinet Wareroom' selling a variety of tables and case furniture, with 'every article in the Inlaid way' and informed by 'his long experience at.mes ssrs. Mayhew and Ince, London' (R. Luddy, 'Every Article in the Inlaid Way: the furniture of William Moore', Irish Arts Review, 2002, vol.18, pp.46-47). By 1791 Moore had moved to the fashionable Capel Street, where he worked until his death in 1815.

Only two works are securely attributable to Moore, a pianoforte and a commode acquired by the the 3rd Duke of Portland when Viceroy of Ireland in 1782 [Fig.1, now in a private collects ion], the latter with a very distinctive frieze of vases, anthemion and swags which also appears on a pair of commodes and a single commode in the Metropolitan and Victoria & Albert Museums respectively. Overall Moore's inlaid designs tend to be more informal and less elaborate compared to those of Ince and Mayhew's, and Moore does not appear to have ever employed gilt bronze mounts in his work, a regular feature of the most important commissions of Ince and Mayhew.

The Portland commode incorporates what seems to have been one's of Moore's preferred design motifs, trailing vines of leaves and flowers, which appear on the offered table as well as numerous attributed works including a dressing table supplied to Marquesses of Bath at Longleat House, Wiltshire, sold Christie's London 13 June 2002 [Fig.2] and a pair of demilune console tables now the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York (one illustrated William Laffan and Christopher Monkhouse, Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design 1690-1840, Art Institute of Chicago 2015, fig.8 cat. no.229) [Fig.3].

A pair of inlaid demilune pier tables of comparable scale to the present lot attributed to Moore was sold Christie's New York, 20 October 2011, lot 567 ($326,500), and single example was sold Christie's London 16 November 1989, lot 126 (£34,100).