Taylor, David

14 Wardour Street, Soho, London; cabinet maker, upholder and chair maker (fl.1803–23)

Taylor took out Sun Insurance policies on 29 December 1809 for £800 of which £500 accounted for stock, utensils and goods in trust; and on 8 June 1812 for £1,500, including £300 on his house and workshop, £770 on stock, utensils and goods in trust; £30 on those in workshop behind a house at 13 Wardour St; and £200 on those in open yard.

On their return to London from Paris in 1803-04 Lord Whitworth and his wife, Duchess of Dorset, had their homes at 33 & 45 Grosvenor Square refurbished by Taylor and Morel and Hughes. Taylor also inventoried the furniture at 45 Grosvenor Square on 23 May 1812 and 10 August 1813.

He submitted a bill to Mrs Leigh dated 19 March–14 June 1813 and totalling £9. Items included laying a carpet, putting up a bed and window curtains, scraping, polishing and mending coromandel chairs, supplying a ‘new green window blind’, and cleaning a bed and curtains from bugs.

Also supplied items to Earl Breadalbane of Taymouth Castle, Perth, 1813–15. His account of 1813 lists several pieces of highly ornate furniture such as ‘a very fine Mahogany cabinet Richly ornamented w. front & ends of Angular Pilasters with French Antique heads, Therms, Friezes in brass well chases, gilt& Richly coloured & Rich framed to enclose entablature’, costing £99 12s. He charged £42 16s for a ‘Very Fine Mahogany Meuble for books, Surmounted with Rich Carved trusses to the underpart with ebony ornaments, fluted pilasters & ebony counter flutes, Ebony beads & moulding & terminations with ebony balustrade to shelves.’ An elaborate buhl inkstand cost £49 6s, and he charged £92 12s 6d for a ‘Very Rich Cabinet of King & tulip wood in feather bands & panels, Serpentine front & ends with French wrought feet & ornament in brass. Richly gilt and coloured & highly chased & pilasters of dolphins & dragons surmounted with a cabinet of 2 French fancy Supporters of brass highly chased & Richly gilt & coloured, a balustrade of tulip wood & brass ornament finished to Match the Rest’. A ‘Fine Rosewood table’, with Kingwood feather banding and Buhl-work cost £43 12s; ‘A very Rich florid Gothic clock case’ with buhl, ebony and brass-work, £106 12s; and ‘A pr. of very elegant encoignures of tulip & Kingwood & very Richly ornamented’ with brasswork and ‘2 porcelain entablatures let in with a Mosaic border …’ cost £90 14s 6d. In 1814 Taylor provided ‘a fine Meuble for books & china’, at £48 12s for the Earl of Breadalbane's house in Park Lane. In 1815 he made for Taymouth Castle ‘2 Magnificent cabinets to Design £580 [?] Ebony pedestal for a clock with buhl friezes & shaft on 4 sides with bronzed ornaments & trusses — to design £65.8.6.’. A long letter from Taylor to the Earl, dated 9 August 1815, explains how to steady a three-sectioned buhl cabinet sent to the Earl. He also requests payment, and describes all the expense, workmanship and materials involved in making the cabinet.

Sources: DEFM; Rowell and Burchard, ‘François Benois, Martin-Eloi Lignereux and Lord Whitworth: Leasing, Furnishing and Dismantling the British Embassy in Paris during the Peace of Amiens, 1802-03’, Furniture History (2016).