Provenance: Private Collection UK
Notes: Giles Grendey was a leading London cabinet maker, born in Wooton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire. Grendey was the apprentice to the London joiner William Sherborne, becoming a freeman in 1716. Taking his own apprentices by 1726, Grendey was elected to the Livery of the Joiners’ Company in 1729. His first workshop was at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and he moved to St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell in 1772 where he developed a thriving export trade.
The present bureau bookcase attribution to Grendey is based on the close similarity of the design and hand of the carving of the apron to that on a labeled cabinet in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the illustration in books related to Giles Grendey.
Literature:
R. W. Symonds, ‘Giles Grendey (1693-1780) and the Export Trade of English Furniture to Spain’, Apollo, 1935, pp. 337-342.
R. W. Symonds, Masterpieces of English Furniture and Clocks, London, 1940, pp. 87-88, figs. 56-57.
R. Edwards & M. Jourdain, ‘Georgian Cabinet-Makers VIII – Giles Grendey & William Hallett’, Country Life, 1942, pp. 176-177.
R. W. Symonds, ‘In Search of Giles Grendey’, Country Life, 1951, pp. 1792-1794.
R. Edwards & M. Jourdain, Georgian Cabinet-Makers, 1955, p. 145.
C. Gilbert, ‘Furniture by Giles Grendey for the Spanish Trade’, The Magazine Antiques, April 1971, pp. 544-550.
G. Wills, English Furniture 1550-1760, London, 1971, p. 130.
S. Jervis, ‘A Great dealer in the Cabinet Way: Giles Grendey (1693-1780)’, Country Life, 1974, pp. 1418-1419.
C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, vol. I, Leeds, 1978, pp. 79-81.
G. Beard & C. Gilbert (eds.), The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, pp. 371-372.
G. Beard & J. Goodison, English Furniture 1500-1840, Oxford, 1987, pp. 34 & 86.
C. Gilbert, The Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, Leeds, 1996, pp. 31-32 & figs. 442-451.
