A GEORGE II MAHOGANY TRIPOD TABLE ATTRIBUTED TO FREDERICK HINTZ

This table, which has so far not been recorded, belongs to a group of similar brass and pewter inlaid tables associated with the German émigré cabinet-maker Frederick Hintz, who was based at ‘The Porcupine’ in Newport Street near Leicester Fields in London, England. His advertisement in the Daily Post, 22 May 1738, discovered by the furniture historian R. W. Symonds, is worded as follows:
To be SOLD, At the Porcupine in Newport-Street, near Leicester-Fields, A Choice Parcel of Desk and Book-Cases of Mahogany, Tea-Tables, Tea-Chests and Tea-Boards etc. all curiously made and inlaid with fine Figures of Brass and Mother of Pearl. They will be sold at a very reasonable Rate, the Maker FREDERICK HINTZ, designing soon to go abroad.
Hintz was born in 1711 in Settin, Germany, and had moved to London some time before 1738. Along with many other craftsmen, he was a member of the Moravian Church, a Protestant movement that settled in Germany and England in the first half of the 18th century. Apart from fine inlaid furniture, Hintz is known to have made musical instruments with similarly fine inlay.
The advertisement tells us that he was at that time considering going abroad. It is not clear why he wanted to leave London or for how long, or if he actually did leave.

Literature: The Daily Post, 22 May 1738, p. 2.
R. W. Symonds, 'Tip-up Tables’, Country Life, 9 March 1945, pp. 418-19.
The Connoisseur ‘Souvenir of the Antique Dealers’ Fair’, 1952, supplement, p. LXXXI.
Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, revised edition, 1954, vol. III, p. 207, fig. 15.
Parke Bernet Galleries, ‘The Walter P. Chrysler Jr. Collection of English Furniture, part I’, sale catalogue, New York, 29-30 April 1960, p. 112, lot 229.
Parke Bernet Galleries, ‘The Walter P. Chrysler Jr. Collection of English Furniture, part II’, sale catalogue, New York, 6-7 May 1960, p. 103, lot 504.
Christopher Claxton Stevens and Stewart Whittington, 18th Century English Furniture: the Norman Adams Collection, 1983, pp. 288-9.
Sotheby’s, sale catalogue, London, 14 November 1984, p. 48, lot 51.
Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert, The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, 1986, p. 434.
Christopher Gilbert and Tessa Murdoch, John Channon and Brass-Inlaid Furniture 1730 -1760, 1993, pls XXIV-XXVII.
Phillips, ‘Fine English and Continental Furniture’, sale catalogue, London, 1998, pp. 46-7, lot 78.
Sotheby’s, ‘The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Saul Steinberg’, sale catalogue, New York, 26 May 2000, pp. 148-9, lot 196.
The Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair handbook, London, 2006, p. 127.
The Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair handbook, London, 2007, p. 107.
Lanie Graf, Journal of Moravian History, no. 5, autumn 2008, p. 7.

Exhibitions: Examples of his work are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, the Museo della Musica, Venice, Italy, and the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany.