A Rare Pair of Late George III Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany Wine Coolers or Cellarettes

Rare Pair of Late George III Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany Wine Coolers or Cellarettes.

This unusual pair of hexagonal cellarets have a hinged top with a knopped finial, opening to an interior fitted with divisions for bottles; the panelled sides are applied with gilt-bronze Greek-key border to the top and a guilloche running pattern to the base; each fitted with finely cast circular leaf and berry cast handles and raised on three tapering fluted uprights headed by stylised anthemion and put down on hoof cast feet.

The hexagonal form and distinctive design with central boss to the top can be related to an almost identical design for a cellarette by the firm of Conrath & Sons of North Audley Street.  Featuring applied ram's heads instead of anthemion mounts, this closely related design was advertised by Conrath of North Audley Street, London as French 'Empire' in style in the trade periodical, The Cabinet Maker & Art Furnisher, January 1895.

Conrath's ram-headed design and a cellarette of the same pattern are illustrated in F. Collard, Regency Furniture, 1985, p. 245.  Another, at Balls Park, Hertfordshire, is illustrated in R. Edwards & P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., 1954, vol. III, p. 133, fig. 24.

The cellarettes once belonged to the New York stockbroker, art collector and renowned philatelist Alfred H. Caspary (d. 1955) and were part of his collection at his South Carolina Plantation, Bonnie Doon, which he purchased in 1931. After Caspary’s death these cellarettes were sold in New York in 1955 to Irwin Untermyer who in 1964 gifted them to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, as part of a superlative bequest of English decorative arts known as one of the world's great private collections on permanent display in a museum. They were deaccessioned and sold by the Metropolitan Museum in 2015.

English, Circa 1895.

Provenance:
Alfred H. Caspary (d. 1955) , Bonnie Doon, South Carolina Plantation,
Sold New York 1955 to Irwin Untermye.
Gifted in 1964 Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Deaccessioned and sold by the Metropolitan Museum 2015.

Literature
The Cabinet Maker & Art Furnisher, January 1895.
Ralph Edwards & P. Macquoid, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed 1954, Vol III, p.133, fig.24.
Y. Hackenbroch, English Furniture with some furniture from other countries in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958, pl. 29, fig. 49, pp. 15-16.
C. Vincent, Highlights of the Untermyer Collection of English and Continental Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977, no. 177, p. 97.
Frances Collard, Regency Furniture, Antique Collectors Club, 1985;  p.245.

Dimensions

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Stock number