Untitled
Joseph Perfetti (d. 1777)
Category
Furniture
Date
1771 (paid for)
Materials
Carved lime, deal, gesso, gold leaf, hard stones, marbles, iron
Place of origin
Marylebone
Collection
Saltram, Devon
NT 871331
Summary
A pair of carved giltwood and hardstone-topped pier or side tables, made by Joseph Perfetti (d. 1777) and paid for in 1771. Both having tops formed of European hardstones and marbles laid in a lozenge pattern within black stone lines and borders. The frames having an acanthus-carved moulding above friezes carved with a lattice of lozenges framing rosettes and spaced by addorsed bellflowers. The friezes hung with petal-filled lunettes either side of deer heads with antlers and issuing garlands of pendant husks. The legs turned and tapering, topped by a capital beneath an egg- and dart-carved moulding. The legs proper fluted and entwined with a garland of husks. On turned feet.
Full description
The tables were supplied by Joseph Perfetti of St Marylebone, London, carver and gilder (active between 1760 and 1778) and are said to have been designed by Robert Adam, although no related drawings are known. The cash account book records that Perfetti was paid £41 1s on 29 January 1771 ‘for Tables Frames for the Great Room Saloon’. On 31 March 1772, he received another £41 for table frames for the Velvet Room [NT 871292.1-2]. The Saloon pier tables certainly have affinities with one of Adam’s designs for Audley End. It has further been suggested that their design is based largely on a drawing prepared by Robert Adam in 1768 for a pier table for the then Archbishop of York, Robert Hay Drummond (1711-1776), but which was not executed. Typical of Perfetti's work, the swags which are pendant from the friezes are reinforced to the reverse with strips of iron.
Provenance
Supplied by John Perfetti to John Parker, 1st Baron Boringdon in 1771. Thence by descent, and accepted in part payment of death duties by HM Treasury from the executors of Edmund Robert Parker, 4th Earl of Morley (1877 - 1951) and transferred to the National Trust in 1957.
Makers and roles
Joseph Perfetti (d. 1777), carver possibly Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792), designer Joseph Perfetti (d. 1777), gilder