This commode is one of a group of closely-related commodes attributed to Vile & Cobb discussed by Lucy Wood in section one of her Catalogue of Commodes, where the present commode is illustrated.¹

A sub-group of the main group of commodes contains examples with the common feature of identical female mask stile mounts. In addition to the present commode, this includes the examples at Burghley House, Blickling Hall (NT 354356.1-2), Woburn Abbey and the Lady Lever Art Gallery, the masks of which are also ornamented identically with rocaille collars, C-scrolls, acanthus leaves, gadrooning, strapwork, husks and lapped lambrequins.

A smaller number still features splayed legs with hoof feet, the other commodes in this sub-group featuring square bracket feet mounted with acanthus leaves. Only seven such commodes including the present example are known:

(1) Metropolitan Museum of Art (Accession No. 61.242.1) 

(2) Blickling Hall, Norfolk (NT 354321)

(3) H. Percy Dean Collection²

(4) Sir Archibald Edmonstone Collection³

(5) Mrs Langdale Smith Collection, ultimately sold Christie’s New York, 16 April 2002 (USD 163,500)⁴

(6) Example sold sold Neal Auction Company, New Orleans, 4 December 1999 (USD 275,000)⁵ 

The hooves indicate a lighter, more mature Rococo style, according with the handles and escutcheons on the present commode which, like the Dean and Edmonstone examples but unlike those at Blickling and Met, are pierced, again indicating an updated, more refined Rococo design. 

The Blickling commode, and the four others that remain at the house, were almost certainly covered by a payment by the 2^nd Earl of Buckinghamshire of £86.5s.9d. to ‘Vile & Cobb cabinet-makers’ in August 1762.⁶ Not only practically confirming the authorship, this provides a clue for the date of the present commode. Yet, with its updated Rococo metalware it possibly dates to a few years later, perhaps 1764 onwards, making it was the work of Cobb alone, his partner Vile retiring that year. 

Renowned for his designs in the French taste, alongside his St. Martin’s Lane neighbour Thomas Chippendale, John Cobb led the synthesis of French and English styles that was so popular in England during the 1750s and 60s. He entered partnership with William Vile in 1751 and a decade later the pair was appointed cabinet-makers to George III, supplying in the next years a series of celebrated pieces for the royal palaces.

Cobb himself was an interesting man. A ‘singularly haughty character’, he was described as ‘one of the proudest men in England’. J. T. Smith in Nollekens and his Times recorded how Cobb ‘in full dress of the most superb and costly kind, strutted through his workshops giving orders to his men’. Smith also relates George III’s placing Cobb in second place through annoyance at his pomposity and imperious delegation of duties to his man Jenkins.⁷

Quite in keeping with his character, in 1772 Cobb was implicated in the smuggling of furniture from France by the use of the diplomatic bag of the Venetian Resident, Baron Berlindis and the Neapolitan Minister, Count Pignatelli, with the aim of evading import duty.⁸ Charismatic and distinctive, Cobb also had the distinction of being the son-in-law of the great Giles Grendey, perhaps the leading maker of walnut and japanned furniture in the first half of the eighteenth-century. On 31^st March 1755 he married Sukey Grendey, Grendey’s’ fourth daughter.

Commodes from this group have achieved significant auction prices. In addition to the examples of the model of the present commode already cited, a commode from the Lucy Wood group with the same espagnolette mask mounts supplied to the Duke of Bolton for Hackwood Park sold Christie’s, 8 July 1999 for GBP 199,500. Another of identical model supplied to the Earl of Ashburnham for Ashburnham Place c. 1760-61, sold Christie’s, 19 October 2000 for USD 171,000. Additionally, a commode of the same model as the Mrs Venetia Gairdner example, with provenance of R. A. Lee, sold Christie’s, 19 April 2001, USD 446,000.

¹ L. Wood (1994), p. 52, fig. 8

² Macquoid, P., The Age of Mahogany (London, 1906), pl. X and Edwards, R. & Macquoid, P., The Dictionary of English Furniture, Vol. II (London, 1954), p. 115, fig. 10; later in the collection of Sir John Ward and formerly with Sir Maurice Bromley-Wilson, c.f. Cescinsky, Herbert, ‘The collection of the Hon. Sir John Ward, K.C.V.O.’, Part IV, Connoisseur (August 1921), pp. 195-7, fig. III

³ sold Christie’s London, 27th March 1958, lot 82

⁴ sold Christie’s London, 24th October 1957, lot 87; thereafter the collection of Michael Behrens, Esq., sold Christie’s London, 6 July 1989, lot 162 (GBP 82,500); with Partridge (Fine Arts) Ltd., London; sold Christie’s New York, 16 April 2002 (USD 163,500)

⁵ sold Neal Auction Company, New Orleans, December 1999 (USD 275,000)

⁶ L. Wood (1994), p. 50

⁷ G. Beard, C. Gilbert, Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660 - 1840 (Leeds, 1986), p. 182

⁸ Idem.