A Regency Brass-Mounted Rosewood Library Table

Attributed to John McLean,

English, circa 1810

The rounded rectangular top inset with dark green leather, is enclosed on three sides by a finely cast brass gallery of Greek-key pattern, above a frieze fitted with two drawers, retaining their original handles and outlined with brass beading.

The table is raised on elegant lyre-form trestle supports, the sweeping uprights incorporating brass strings and bold inward-scrolling terminals. The supports are united by an arched, brass-beaded stretcher and terminate in splayed legs with foliate-cast brass caps and castors.

The combination of richly figured rosewood, restrained gilt-brass ornament and distinctive lyre-form supports is characteristic of the sophisticated Grecian furniture associated with John McLean, whose work was among the most fashionable produced in London during the opening decades of the nineteenth century.

John Mclean 1770-1825

John McLean was among the most distinguished London cabinetmakers of the Regency period. His firm, John McLean & Son, was established in Marylebone and became particularly associated with sophisticated furniture in richly figured rosewood, enlivened by finely cast and chased brass mounts. His work combined the fashionable Grecian and French influences of the period with an exceptionally refined English cabinetmaking tradition. McLean’s reputation was recognised by Thomas Sheraton, who praised the quality of his work in his Cabinet Dictionary of 1803, and his patrons included the 5th Earl of Jersey, for whom the firm supplied furniture at Middleton Park and Berkeley Square