Provenance

The Pelletier family of carvers and gilders left France in the early 1680s, probably to escape persecution as Huguenots, and settled in Amsterdam. By 1682 Jean Pelletier was established in London and by the end of the decade his two sons René and Thomas had joined him. Their introduction to royal service was due to the patronage of the francophile Duke of Montagu, the courtier responsible, as Master of the Great Wardrobe, for the furnishing of all royal palaces. Montagu held office from 1671 to 1685 and from 1689 to 1709.

For tables, mirrors and stands - the principal furniture types in which they specialised - the Pelletiers drew heavily on the designs of French contemporaries employed by Louis XIV; the engraved furniture of Jean Le Pautre (1618-82) and his son Pierre (1660-1744), for example, finds numerous echoes in the Pelletiers' work for the English Crown. On the technical side, the Pelletiers introduced many subtleties and refinements to the preparation, cutting, gilding and burnishing of carved surfaces. In the rare cases where gilded surfaces survive unscathed, such innovations suggest an attempt to simulate the decorative effect of gilded metal.