This striking commode, executed in golden satinwood, is designed in the elegant 'antique' style originated by the country's leading Neoclassical architect, Robert Adam (d. 1792), and is attributed to the fashionable cabinetmakers William Ince (d. 1804) and John Mayhew (d. 1811), who ranked King George III, the 6th Earl of Coventry, and the Earl of Kerry among their distinguished clients. Ince and Mayhew established their partnership at premises in Golden Square, London, and became one of the leading cabinet-making firms in the latter part of the eighteenth century. In 1762 they issued their book of designs, The Universal System of Household Furniture. Written in both French and English, the Universal System reflects their Parisian bent—no doubt intended to convey cosmopolitanism and attract clients with French tastes—an inclination which likely relates to the important role of marquetry in their oeuvre.

The attribution is based on a combination of stylistic features, particularly the distinctive form and the design of the Neoclassical marquetry. The uncommon shape, deriving from the form of a Classical sarcophagus, corresponds exactly to the lower section of a hybrid cabinet-commode commissioned circa 1785 from Ince and Mayhew for Packington Hall, Warwickshire, by Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford (1751-1812). Lord Aylesford was a keen antiquarian, and spent the 1780s remodeling Packington in the avant-garde Neoclassicism of the later eighteenth century, even hiring the Joseph Bonomi, a former employee of the Adam brothers, as his architect (see H. Roberts and C. Cator, Industry and Ingenuity: The Partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew, London and Dublin, 2022, pp. 209-210 and 321, pls. 195-198).

The cabinet-commode made by Ince and Mayhew for Packington, however, differs from the present lot in its marquetry scheme. The Packington piece was intended for Lord Aylesford’s ‘Pompeian Gallery’, home to the Earl’s collection of Etruscan vases, and is accordingly decorated with Etruscan figural panels. The present lot, however, matches exactly the marquetry design for the doors to a breakfront bookcase in the Harrowby Collection (op. cit., pp. 224 and 282, pl. 76). No documented commission for this breakfront survives, but an attribution to Ince and Mayhew may nonetheless be advanced, especially considering the marquetry joining and marquetry at the circular glazing bars to the upper section. The marquetry to the lower section, while matching the present lot in design, is executed in its inverse—where on the present lot, the satinwood constitutes a blonde ground for darker foliate marquetry, on the Harrowby bookcase the marquetry leaves are themselves executed in satinwood, and are set into a darker harewood ground.