The British Antiques Dealers’ Association held their annual fair from 15th to 21st March this year in Chelsea, London. 

One of the exhibitors was James McWhirter Antiques Ltd who included an Ince & Mayhew mirror in their collection.  Made around 1785 it was described as a George III carton pierre mirror with a central plate from the Queen Anne period. Carton pierre is like papier-mache, being  based on  pulped paper fibre extended and hardened with substantial amounts of glue, whiting, and gypsum plaster, and sometimes alum and flour. Carton-pierre was pressed into moulds  and allowed to harden, the result being mid-way between plaster and papier-mache in weight and density.  It was often used by Robert Adam.

This mirror is surmounted by a classical urn which has trailing husks and swags inset with classical oval roundels.  The husks are a classic Ince & Mayhew decoration.  A picture of the mirror featured in an article in Apollo magazine.  It was priced at £11,800.

There are around a dozen items of furniture attributed to Ince & Mayhew for sale in the listings of BADA with different antique dealers.

A friend of mine reports that she heard mention of William Ince in a radio play on Radio 4 the other day.  In the play someone was saying she had to go to Ince to collect some deal.

It is likely that this was Lady Shelburne who wrote in her diary in 1768 “To Mayhew and Inch where is some beautiful cabinet work and two pretty cases for one of the rooms in my apartment, and which though they are only deal, and to be painted white, he charges £50 for.”[i]

We know from her diary that Lady Shelburne visited Ince and Mayhew on a number of occasions. In 1765 she wrote: Saturday the 28th We all went to Ince the cabinet makers to see our furniture for the drawing room and my dressing room at Bowood. Gave Ince plans from Herculaneum and Palmyra for ornaments for a Comode of Yew tree wood inlaid with Holly and Ebony.[ii]  This was the little scene enacted in Amanda Vickery’s television programme, At Home with the Georgians: A Woman’s Touch, broadcast in November 2015.  It was wonderful to see an actor playing William Ince.


[i] Encyclopedia of Interior Design edited by Joanna Banham

[ii] Vickery, A. Behind Closed Doors Yale University Press, New Haven & London 2009 p.169 Citation: Bowood Archives, Lady Shelburne's diaries, vol 3 (1766), f.1, vol 1 ff.10,13,15,16

There is some interesting information about an Ince & Mayhew Pembroke Table which is for sale at Nicholas Wells Antiques Ltd. It is described as one of the finest 18th Century Pembroke tables ever made and, from the photographs, it certainly looks to be a wonderfully preserved example of their work. A full description of the table is given along with some superb photographs and an in-depth explanation of the different woods used.

In the centre there is a satinwood oval, crossbanded in kingwood, which is framed in boxwood & mahogany lines, surrounded by the harewood veneers. This is also crossbanded in kingwood with boxwood and mahogany lines and has an ebonised moulded edge. The veneers are laid on Honduras mahogany.
Harewood is created by boiling English sycamore veneer in a solution of ferrous (iron) sulphate which turns it a silvery-grey colour. Apparently in the 17th century the roots of sycamore trees were treated with ferrous sulphate for several years to turn the wood grey naturally. It is an expensive process, though it is possible to do it yourself, as explained by the Redbridge Marquetry Group!

When the table was first made the satinwood would have been yellow and the kingwood purple, a very striking combination with the silver-grey.

The table is described as A Museum quality masterpiece from two of the most influential designers & makers from the 18th Century. I have written to Nicholas Wells to ask what is known about its provenance.

On 17th November Christie's are holding an auction in London entitled The English Collector: English Furniture, Clocks and Portrait Miniatures.  Amongst the items for sale is a very attractive  Ince & Mayhew bowfront commode, with harewood, rosewood-crossbanding and inlaid satinwood.

What I especially like about it is that it has four graduated drawers, getting larger in size as they descend.  It is dated around 1770 and the estimate is £12,000 to £18,000.

There are strong similarities between this commode and ones at Broadlands supplied to Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston, for the Book Room.  It has bell flowers in the marquetry and ebonised edge mouldings.  The ring handles are very similar to those on other commodes at Broadlands, and to an Ince & Mayhew commode sold by Christie's in 2007.

I recently came across Pat Kirkham's book on Furniture Making in London in the Eighteenth Century[i].  There are a number of interesting facts about the firm Ince & Mayhew, many of which were included in her article for the Furniture History Society[ii].

However, one detail that had escaped me up to now was that when John Mayhew married Isabella Stephenson, she had a large dowry.  Pat Kirkham writes: John Mayhew’s wife brought a large sum of money to her husband when they married in 1762, and, widowed within the year, Mayhew used approximately three thousand pounds of that money to finance his business.

I am going to re-visit the National Archives to see if there is any further information on this, but it did help to explain why Isabella's sister, Ann, William's wife, had no hesitation about taking John Mayhew to court to get a fair settlement on the break-up of the partnership.  She would no doubt have known all about that money, and would have regarded it as belonging equally to her family.  No wonder she insisted on a more balanced final payment.

[i] Kirkham, P. (1988). The London Furniture Trade 1700-1870. Furniture History, 24, I-219. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23406689
[ii] Kirkham, P.. (1974). The Partnership of William Ince and John Mayhew 1759—1804. Furniture History, 10, 56–60.  Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23403407
 
 

Further to last week’s post, I had a look in the British Newspaper Archives for Ince & Mayhew and then searched again for Mayhew and Ince.

The results supported my findings.  The firm was called Ince & Mayhew, apart from the eighteenth century articles and advertisements which came out when the firm was still in existence, which referred to Mayhew and Ince.  Any furniture for sale at auction stated Ince & Mayhew.

Interestingly in the 1870s and 1880s there were a series of advertisements in many local papers looking for copies of furniture directories.  They all read the same:

OLD BOOKS WANTED on Cabinet Making by Hepplewhite, Ince and Mayhew, or Chippendale.  Will give £2 2s for either…..

The amount offered was sometimes £2 10s.The address given for replies was 41 Porchester Road, London, later Evering Road, Stoke Newington.

In 1878 the advertisement appeared in the following papers:  Bristol Mercury, Liverpool Mercury, Worcester Journal, Sheffield Independent, York Herald, Derbyshire Times and Chesterfield Herald, Leeds Times, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, Hampshire Advertiser, Belfast Telegraph. In 1879 it was in the Liverpool Mercury, in 1880 the Glasgow Herald and in 1881 the Gloucester Citizen, Bury Free Press, Leeds Times, Banbury Advertising and the Lancaster Gazette.

On 12th May 1894 the Birmingham Daily Post ran a report on an Important Sale of Books at Sothebys at which The Universal System of Household Furniture consisting of 300 designs and 95 plates by Ince and Mayhew had been sold for £25[i],  proving a very good investment for the collector.
 
As reported last week, the 1762 edition of the Universal System was specially scarce and a copy in perfect condition was priced by Batsfords in 1940 at £150[ii].  In 1996,Christie’s sold a copy of an intermediate issue, dated about 1765, for £6,325 and in 2011 they sold a copy for £8,125.  A first edition, dated 1760, was sold by Bonhams in 2013  for 6500 USD (£4,973 ) and a copy was sold by them from the library of the late Hugh Selbourne, M.D. in 2015 for £6,875 including premium. 
 
What has astonished me though is a copy of the Universal System being sold by Potterton Books of York, London and New York for £18,000.  This version is printed on twentieth century mottled calf, has gilt decorative borders and red morocco lettering pieces.  It is described as a Handsome book. 
 
William Ince invented and drew 75 of the 95 plates as well as the title page and I’ve been looking at some of them in my Dover Publications edition.  Items such as the library steps and the Ladies’ Dressing Table are really delightful!


[i] According to the National Archives Currency Converter, £25 in 1890 would be worth close on £1500 in 2005.  £2 2s would be roughly £100.
[ii] Davis, Frank, The World of Art in Wartime, Furniture “Convenient to the Nobility and Gentry The Illustrated London News on 25th May 1940. 

Unsurprisingly the descendants of William Ince are convinced that the firm should be referred to as Ince & Mayhew.  After all, William was the talented cabinet-maker who produced the majority of the drawings for their directory The Universal System of Household Furniture.  He was the man to whom Matthew Boulton offered a well-aired Bed, wholesome Bread & Cheese and a hearty wellcome[i].  He would have overseen the production of the furniture, probably choosing the workmen, training the apprentices and checking on their output.  He was the man who wrote to Lord Myddleton at Chirk Castle to check the paintings on the ceiling to make sure the compartments over the Glass’s in the piers might be correspondant with them[ii].  It is not going too far to say that William Ince was responsible for the furniture produced by the firm.

Why then is it often referred to as Mayhew and Ince? 

Eighteenth century records almost always refer to the firm as Mayhew and Ince. In their 1759 Agreement John Mayhew’s name comes before William Ince’s on the legal document. Mayhew and Ince is how it is written in the Land Tax returns for the houses they owned and rented; it is referred to as Mayhew & Ince in some directories and advertisements. Charles Ince, William’s son, refers to the Firm of Mayhew, Ince and Sons in his advertisement in the London Gazette of 12th April 1800 where he says he is taking over the firm.  Also many of the accounts sent to their clients were headed Mayhew & Ince.  However, occasionally they advertised as Ince & Mayhew, such as in an advertisement for a Lease which appeared in The Times on 23rd May 1799 and sometimes in the Bank books for their clients the name of William Ince appears, or Ince & Mayhew, Ince & Co, Messrs Ince.

It is also interesting to note how the name has been presented in the antiques world.  Initially, their directory was the main focus of articles and as William Ince’s name appears before that of John Mayhew, the firm is referred to as Ince & Mayhew.  In 1904 R. S. Clouston wrote an article called Minor English Furniture Makers of the Eighteenth Century Article III-Ince and Mayhew[iii]. An item in The Times dated 8th June 1921 refers to some chairs for which there is reason to think that they are the work of Ince and Mayhew as they resemble an illustration of a chair in the Universal System.  

An article written by Lieut-Colonel E. F. Strange, Late Keeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum, for The Illustrated London News in 1929 entitled English Hanging Mirrors also referred to the publication of Ince and Mayhew-The Universal System… and had a reproduction of Plate LXXVIII from their Directory. This showed two designs for Oval Glass-Frames and is a delightful illustration by William Ince, with a hunter and dog, birds, squirrels and possibly a little lamb included in the carving.

Another article appeared in The Illustrated London News on 25th May 1940.  This was entitled The World of Art in Wartime, Furniture “Convenient to the Nobility and Gentry.” by Frank Davis.  He included four illustrations from The Universal System, each time referring to the firm as Ince & Mayhew.  The particular volume from which they were taken, the 1762 edition, was specially scarce and in perfect condition so was priced by Batsfords at £150; Chippendale’s Director being priced at £25.   In 1946 the furniture shop Heal’s ran a series of advertisements using quotations from The Universal System, citing the firm as Ince & Mayhew. 

In The Times in 1963 Edward Pinto, in an article about the Furniture Makers’ Guild, wrote Such great names in the eighteenth century as Thomas Chippendale, William Vile, Ince and Mayhew were proud to call themselves Upholders first and Cabinet-Makers second.  Pinto used the same name for the firm when writing about the Kimbolton Cabinet in another article for The Times in 1969.

Lindsay Boynton’s article in 1966 was called An Ince and Mayhew Correspondence[iv].  Colin Streeter consistently refers to Ince and Mayhew in his 1971 article Marquetry Furniture by a Brilliant London Master[v] as does Morrisson Heckscher in 1974[vi]. In 1981 Hugh Roberts wrote articles about Broadlands, called The Ince and Mayhew Connection[vii].  However in the 1990s the name changes to Mayhew and Ince as seen in articles by Hugh Roberts and Charles Cator, in Lucy Wood’s Catalogue of Commodes, and almost always in Lot Notes produced by the auction houses.  Does anyone know why?

It is very pleasing to note that in his more recent articles Hugh Roberts has started using Ince and Mayhew again[viii]. 


[i] Boynton, L. (1966). An Ince and Mayhew Correspondence Furniture History, 2, 23–36
[ii] Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru = The National Library of Wales E5126-E5128
[iii] The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 6(19), 47–52
[iv] Boynton, L. (1966). An Ince and Mayhew Correspondence Furniture History, 2, 23–36
[v] Colin Streeter, June 1971 Marquetry Furniture by a Brilliant London Master The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 29 (10), 418–429
[vi] Heckscher, M. (1974). Ince and Mayhew: Bibliographical Notes from New York  Furniture History, 10, 61–67.
[vii] Hugh Roberts, ‘The Ince and Mayhew Connection, Furniture at Broadlands, Hampshire’, Country Life, 29 January 1981 pp288-90.
[viii] Hugh Roberts, 'Precise and Exact in the Minutest Things of Taste and Decoration' : The Earl of Kerry's Patronage of Ince & Mayhew (2013)  Furniture History 2013


 

I have been looking through some old catalogues online and came across the wonderfully named Colonel Mulliner’s Extraordinary Tray, which was for sale from Apter-Fredericks in New York in 2011.  It is a beautiful piece made from satinwood and tulipwood with a number of marquetry motifs including husks tied with ribbons.   The design matches a number of other pieces attributed to Ince & Mayhew including a pair of card tables and a Pembroke table from Ham House. 
   
Being curious about the name, I decided to find out more about Colonel Mulliner. In his later years he established an outstanding collection of English furniture, objects of art and tapestry, which was sold by Christie’s after his death in 1924, when his estate was worth around £250,000 (nearly £10 million today)[i]. The tray was in his collection, as well as a commode by Ince & Mayhew which is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York as part of the Untermyer Collection.   

However, as Mr H H Mulliner, Managing Director of the Coventry Ordnance Works, the Colonel played a part in the build up to World War One.  He took over the family’s coach-building business in 1887 and by 1897 they were making body parts for motor vehicles, including Rolls Royce and Bentley.    He was also interested in developing tools to make ordnance and became Managing Director of Coventry Ordnance Works owned by Cammell Laird in 1903.   In 1906 he wrote to the War Office to inform them that there was an “enormous expenditure going on at Krupp’s for the purpose of manufacturing very large naval guns and mountings quickly.”[ii] Krupp produced most of the artillery of the Imperial German Army.

Unfortunately that was not the case, and it can only be assumed he was trying to get business for his own company, which was struggling to find orders and by 1909 was lying idle. Mulliner wrote letters to The Times, visited politicians and succeeded in persuading Balfour that more Dreadnoughts had to be built.  The popular press supported the scare-mongering, (sound familiar?)  and eight vessels were eventually ordered.  Germany, who had no intention of producing the numbers of dreadnoughts mentioned, lost all trust in British diplomacy.  Philip Noel-Baker in his 1959 Nobel Prize lecture said: year by year, the race in Dreadnoughts led to panics and to counter-panics in Germany and Britain; by 1909 our foreign minister, Lord Grey said it had become the most important single factor in increasing European tension and the risk of war.[iii]

Mulliner was required to leave the Board of Directors of Cammell Laird, receiving a settlement of £100,000 in addition to the payment of £142,566 for shares on the merger of the businesses in 1903. 

He was in the Territorial Army and in 1914 he was an Honorary Colonel for the Remount Service, whose role was to provide horses for the cavalry.  He relinquished this appointment in October 1915.  According to the London Gazette he relinquished the appointment of Hon. Col. of the Royal Field Artillery, 4th S. Mid. Brigade on 18th November 1922, on completion of tenure, retaining his rank.

He developed his interest in antiques after the war and was an important early collector.  He left some items to the Victoria & Albert Museum, and also bought and modernised Rainham Hall, now belonging to the National Trust. 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulliners_(Birmingham)

[i] Probate Record
[ii] Noel-Baker, Philip John, The Private Manufacture of Armaments. London, Gollancz 1936 p412-6
[iii] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1959/noel-baker-lecture.html

Two yew-wood tables by Ince & Mayhew have recently been advertised by Apter Fredericks in London.  Although slightly varying in design they both have a very distinctive frieze, which can also be seen on other items of Ince & Mayhew furniture.

The style is called a Vitruvian scroll and is like a running wave.  It was named after Vitruvius a Roman architect, engineer and author.  It was almost uncanny to see how closely the frieze on the dressing-table provided for the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace matched the ones on the two tables. It is also the same design as the frieze on a card table at Blenheim. The tables are saved to my Pinterest board – Furniture for Sale.

This Vitruvian scroll frieze also appears on a pair of Bookcases sold by Christie’s in 1993 for £111,500, which also have swags hanging from ribbon ties and large urns, both characteristic of Ince & Mayhew marquetry.   
  
It is this very close similarity that allows an expert to attribute an item of furniture to a particular maker with confidence.  The most satisfactory proof to my mind is a bill that specifies the item that was supplied, on a piece of paper with the firm’s heading!  Croome Court, and Linley Hall provide good examples in their archives.

Another very helpful indicator is an inventory that specifies an item supplied by the firm such as the 1792 inventory at Broadlands where Lady Palmerston noted the Secretary made by Ince (17)82.

Sometimes a person’s bank account will indicate that an amount was paid to Mr Ince, or Ince and Mayhew, or any of the other variations.  The 3rd Earl of Darnley’s account book gives the account name as William Ince from 1761-1780.[i]  He paid the firm a total of £3,798 18s 4d, and his son the 4th Earl paid them £3605 9s 3d.  This excludes the £962 18s for the 3rd Earl’s funeral. (Medway Archives: U0565) It is then a question of looking at items of furniture  that still exist  related to the account-holder's residence, in this case Cobham Hall, to see which have Ince & Mayhew characteristics.


[i] Ingle, Sarah William Ince Cabinet Maker His Life and Ancestry 2015 p.60