The table, which is likely to have been executed by Whytock & Reid, was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1927 for the entrance to the library wing at Glencruitten – one of the architect’s last great country house commissions – and incorporates a 1922 bronze study of the dancer Isadora Duncan as a faun by his friend Pilkington Jackson.
The largest dispersal of Lorimer-designed furniture for some years – there are 30 pieces in total – comes with the end of four
generations of the MacKay family at the Argyll house that was first built in 1897 for the Shelly-Bonteyn family but was acquired in 1917, along with a neighbouring estate, by the
venture capitalist Alexander MacKay.
Souvenirs of the Grand Tour, paintings by the Dundee artist James McBey (who as a family friend was a frequent visitor to Glencruitten) and a painting of two girls by John Henry Lorimer (the architect’s brother) are among the 1000 lots that carry estimates from £100 to £20,000.
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Trio of Scots talents in one
The extraordinary walnut and burr walnut veneered hexagonal display table, right, combining the talents of three well-known names of the Scottish design movement will carry an estimate of £7000-10,000 when Shapes sell the contents of Glencruitten House, near Oban from their Edinburgh saleroom on September 6.
