AN IRISH GEORGE II STYLE MAHOGANY SIDE TABLE BY HICKS OF DUBLIN, late 19th CENTURY, the moulded top over on a carved frieze with foliate swags issuing from eagle heads and centred with a mask, on foliate carved ‘broken’ cabriole legs and paw feet, stamped HICKS. 79.5cm high, 179cm wide, 70cm deep.Provenance: The Davey Family; sold Mealy's Co. Kilkenny, 30 July 1991, lot 476 The work of James Hicks, from Dublin, is the antithesis of modernism. Renowned for his use of exotic woods, astounding marquetry and a profound interest with Chippendale, Adams and Sheraton styles, Hicks opened his workshop in 1894. Worldwide royal patronage followed and the firm won many famous commissions.Early furniture reflected the 18th century Palladian style featuring decorative shells, acanthus leaves, laurel swags, and heavyset cabriole legs. Later work was classical in style and refined.Hicks won many awards - notably the Aonach Tailteann in 1928. This satinwood display cabinet won a silver medal at the Royal Dublin Society Spring show in 1934, and the satinwood table dating 1929 was one of several pieces, which represented Ireland’s craftsmanship at the New York World Trade Fair in 1939. The President and Chairman of the fair sent a certificate to the Hick’s firm conveying their appreciation of the substantial contribution which Hick’s exhibit had made towards the success of the fair. Hick sadly died in 1936, never gaining the opportunity to receive this accolade in person.This impressive side table is attributed to the celebrated Dublin cabinet-maker, James Hicks and Sons of 5 and 6 Lower Pembroke Street. James Hicks was born in 1886, the son of a chairmaker, Patrick Hicks. The family may have been associated with the Dublin cabinet-making firm of Michael Butler, by tradition living next door in Upper Abbey Street. Butler made some of the finest 18th century revival Irish mahogany furniture and dealt in antique furniture. James Hicks set up his own business in Lower Pembroke Street, in 1894, having worked in Tottenham Court Road, London. He described himself as ‘Cabinet Manufacturer, Collector and Restorer of Chippendale, Adam and Sheraton furniture’, and included among his clients, several members of the Royal family as well as the aristocracy. Hicks had many important patrons and President Cosgrave in 1928 gave the firm the big commission of fitting out the Dail and Senate in the new Parliament in Leinster House and work was done in the Four Courts. Sets of Chippendale style chairs were ordered for the President’s house - Aras an Uachtaráin - and the Irish Embassy in Berlin. Hicks died in 1936.James Levins Snr. was the finest carver at Hick’s workshop and was responsible for the Irish baroque style mahogany side table with its grotesque head that was sold by the McGrath family, Cabinteely House, Co. Dublin, Christie’s house sale, 5-6 November 1984, lot 18 (see introduction by The Knight of Glin, ‘The McGraths, Cabinteely and James Hicks and Sons’). That mask is very close to the mask on the present table, also being flanked by C-scrolls, so it is probably that Levins carved the present lot. The table draws heavily on Irish 18th century prototypes, with its deep carved drapery-swagged apron and Venus shell badges, but is clearly of the revival period in its exageration of some of the lines (for example the oversized feet and narrow legs). That the essentially conservative nature of the Irish collector is nothing new can be demonstrated by the career of James Hicks. The most proficient and admired of this country’s cabinetmakers in the 20th century, Hicks enjoyed as much popularity during his life as he has posthumously.Pieces from his workshop come up regularly at auction and they always secure excellent prices, as buyers are confident of every item’s quality and durability. Hicks’s furniture, in addition to its impeccable craftmanship, is invariably graceful and easy to place in any home. However, while his high standards are consistent, so too is Hicks’s want of imagination and the essentially anachronistic character of his designs. When he first started his own business in 1894, the Celtic Revival movement was at its height, yet Hicks showed no interest in producing items with a distinctively “Irish” appearance. By the time he died in 1936, the modernist movement had permeated Ireland but evidence of this is non-existent in his work. Instead, Hicks was content to design and manufacture what might be called pastiche 18th-century English furniture.Except on a handful of pieces, he did not employ Irish motifs such as the lion’s claw foot or central mask on tables which had been so popular during the early and mid18th century. Hicks’s preference was for designs from a slightly later period, when neoclassicism had come into favour; Adam, Sheraton and Chippendale were his three muses.A specific influence has been traced to the late 18th-century cabinet-maker William Moore, who moved to Dublin in 1782 after training in London with the firm of Ince and Mayhew. The son of a chair-maker, James Hicks was born in Dublin and after serving an apprenticeship in London he returned to open premises in his native city on Lower Pembroke Street in 1894. His success appears to have been rapid; in 1903, Princess Victoria, daughter of Edward VII, bought a number of his pieces - the king himself is also supposed to have purchased a set of chairs - and two years later the newly-married Crown Princess of Sweden ordered Hicks’s furniture for her palace in Stockholm. In 1928, Hicks was commissioned to furnish the Dail and Seanad in Leinster House and he refurnished Cabinteely House after 1933 for Joe McGrath.In The Arts & Crafts Movements in Dublin and London, 1885-1925, published in the late 1990s, Nicola Gordon Bowe quotes Daisy, Lady Fingall as recalling that in 1904 Hugh Lane arranged for Hicks to make shelving and bookcases for her home, Killeen Castle. “His own high standard of art”, she remembered, would not allow him to produce anything unworthy of “the great tradition of cabinetmaking from which he was descended”.In her memoirs, Lady Fingall also referred to Hicks possessing “an untidy workshop in Pembroke Street, where many great people visited him”. His firm employed some 24 cabinet-makers and artisans, supervised by Hicks, who seems to have been particularly preoccupied with high standards.According to Desmond Fitzgerald, the Knight of Glin, Hicks’s marquetry was done to his designs by Harry Sherrard of Liffey Street, while carving was usually left to James Levins Snr and Jr; they would have been responsible for the rococo-style mirrors produced by Hicks and for the friezes featured on certain table fronts.Hicks’s nephew, Harry, was another member of staff, who worked on Titania’s Palace, the dolls’ house designed by Sir Neville Wilkinson, the framework of which was built of mahogany in eight sections in the Pembroke Street workshop. Mahogany was the most common material used, but his work also features a variety of imported woods such as satinwood, tulipwood and rosewood. Furniture by Hicks regularly won awards when exhibited at fairs, including the Gold Trophy at the 1928 Aonach.Although he found time to teach at craft schools in Dublin, Hicks, who died in 1936, seems to have had few successors and certainly none of his calibre. He was, in effect, this country’s last master cabinet-maker of the old school. His want of innovation, occasionally the subject of critical comments during Hicks’s lifetime, never deterred admiration either then or since.Condition Report: 178 x 71 x 80cm highIn excellent original condition - no damages to the carvingThe top could do with a wax polish
