# The Diana and Minerva Commode > Thomas Chippendale - 1773 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/thomas-chippendale/harewood-diana-and-minerva-commode/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-17 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Thomas Chippendale - **Date:** 1773 - **Medium:** Marquetry of satinwood, rosewood, tulipwood, ebony and other woods over a carcase, with engraved ivory inlay and gilt-brass mounts - **Dimensions:** Not stated by Harewood House Trust and not published in any source consulted for this record. - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** English, eighteenth century - **Current location:** Harewood House, West Yorkshire - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A marquetry dressing commode delivered to Harewood House in 1773 and billed by Thomas Chippendale at GBP 86. It is routinely called his greatest single object, and it is one of the few pieces of eighteenth-century English furniture whose maker is proved by an invoice rather than argued from style.It has never been sold. There is no hammer price for it, no premium, no estimate and no auction record of any kind, because in two hundred and fifty-three years it has changed hands only by inheritance. That is unusual enough to be the first thing worth saying about it, and it is why a price database has nothing on this object at all.The commode on display is also not the commode that was delivered. Its marquetry was originally coloured with natural dyes that light has since taken out, so the golden object photographed today is a faded version of a brightly coloured one. Published captions get it wrong in the other direction too: the Wikimedia Commons plate used on this page calls it mahogany and places it in the State Bedroom, and Harewood's own record says satinwood ground and State Dressing Room. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1773-1795** Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood (1713-1795) `[documented]` (commission) Commissioned as part of the furnishing of the new house at Harewood and delivered in 1773 for the State Dressing Room. Chippendale's bill prices it at GBP 86. The commission was not a single order but a running account: Samuel Popplewell's Day Book records the cabinet maker Samuel James arriving in October 1769 and the upholder William Reid making repeated visits between 1771 and 1776, spending 856 days in total at Harewood laying carpets, hanging wallpaper, upholstering and arranging furniture. The commode arrived in the middle of a seven-year fit-out, not as a delivery on its own. - **1795-present** The Lascelles family, Earls of Harewood, at Harewood House `[documented]` (descent) By inheritance in one family and in one house since delivery. The commode has never been offered for sale, and no loan or exhibition away from Harewood is recorded in the sources consulted. The date on which administration passed to the Harewood House Trust is not stated in any source that could be fetched for this record and is deliberately not asserted here. - **1971-1972** Retained at Harewood while the collection around it was broken `[documented]` (survival) Survival in place is contingent and the contingency is history. In 1971 the trustees of the 7th Earl of Harewood sold Titian's Death of Actaeon at Christie's for a hammer price of GBP 1,680,000. The dealer Julius Weitzner resold it at once to the J. Paul Getty Museum for GBP 1,763,000, an export licence was required, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art suspended approval for a year, and the National Gallery bought the picture for the nation in 1972. The commode was not among the property sold. A record that treats its presence at Harewood as inevitable has missed that the house was selling at the top of the market in exactly those years. - **present** Harewood House Trust, West Yorkshire `[documented]` (display) On public display in the Spanish Library. The room is the same room the commode was made for, renamed: it was the State Dressing Room in 1773. No accession or inventory number is published for the object. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - THIS OBJECT HAS NEVER BEEN AT AUCTION. There is no hammer price, no premium-inclusive total, no estimate and no private-treaty figure for the Diana and Minerva Commode, because it has passed only by inheritance since 1773. The only price attached to it is the GBP 86 on Chippendale's own bill, which is a MAKER'S INVOICE FIGURE and not a market price of any kind - it is what the maker charged the first owner, not what a buyer would pay. It is recorded in the technical block rather than here, deliberately, so that it can never be read as a hammer. The GBP 1,680,000 hammer recorded in the provenance chain for 1971 is the price of Titian's Death of Actaeon, a different object sold out of the same house, and is not a price for this commode. ## Exhibitions - Thomas Chippendale: Designer, Maker, Decorator, Harewood House, West Yorkshire, 2018 ## Open questions - What are the commode's dimensions? Harewood House Trust publishes none, and no source consulted gives a measurement. - Who cut and engraved the marquetry? The firm is documented by invoice; the hand inside the workshop is not named in Popplewell's day book or anywhere else consulted. - What were the original colours? Harewood states the dyes have faded but no analysis of the dyestuffs, and therefore no reconstruction of the delivered appearance, was found. - What ivory is it, and what is its legal position? Neither species nor quantity is published, and no source addresses the UK Ivory Act 2018 or any exemption. - Does the GBP 86 on the bill cover the whole object, or only part of the work on it? The invoice wording quoted in the sources is partial and the full bill text was not obtained. - When did administration pass to the Harewood House Trust, and does the trust or the family own the commode today? No source consulted states either. - Has the commode ever left Harewood for loan, exhibition or conservation? No off-site movement is recorded in the sources consulted, which is not the same as none having happened. ## Sources - [1] Harewood House Trust, object page, 'Diana and Minerva Commode'. The holding institution's own record: date 1773, maker Thomas Chippendale, cost GBP 86, made for the State Dressing Room now the Spanish Library, marquetry with ivory inlay, satinwood and tulipwood and ebony from the British Empire, the two roundels and their attributes, and the statement that the original dyed colours have faded. - [2] Harewood House Trust, 'Thomas Chippendale's Tercentenary'. Source for the invoice wording, the satinwood ground with rosewood and tulipwood, the central concave recess, the statement that the timbers were often logged by enslaved people, Samuel Popplewell's Day Book 1769-1776, the cabinet maker Samuel James from October 1769, the upholder William Reid and his 856 days between 1771 and 1776, and the 2018 exhibition opening on 22 March. - [3] Wikimedia Commons file page for the lead plate, DSC01815 by the user Daderot. Licence verified at fetch time: LicenseShortName 'Public domain'; the wikitext carries {{PD-old-100}} for the object and {{self|cc-zero}} for the photograph, so the photographer has waived his own copyright in the image of a three-dimensional object. Also the source of the two errors discussed in the record, the file title calling the commode mahogany and placing it in the State Bedroom. - [4] The Chippendale Society, article on Chippendale's clandestine first marriage: Catherine Redshaw, 19 May 1748, the New Chapel near Hyde Park Corner, the irregular handwritten licence noted by the member Peter White, the likely reason of a bride under 21, the Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753, and the second marriage to Elizabeth Davis on 17 July 1777. - [5] The Decorative Arts Trust, Attingham Summer School post, recording the furniture historian Adam Bowett teaching from the Diana and Minerva Commode at Harewood House. Cited for the fact that the object is used as a teaching piece by named scholars; the substance of Bowett's remarks is not printed on the page and is NOT relied on here. - [6] TERTIARY. Wikipedia, 'The Death of Actaeon', for the 1971 Harewood sale at Christie's at a hammer price of GBP 1,680,000, the Weitzner resale to the Getty at GBP 1,763,000, the export licence deferral by the Reviewing Committee, and the National Gallery purchase in 1972 as NG6420. Flagged for replacement with the Reviewing Committee's own annual report and the National Gallery catalogue entry. - [7] TERTIARY. Wikipedia, 'Thomas Chippendale', for the baptism at Otley on 5 June 1718, the burial at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 16 November 1779, the training under his father John Chippendale and under Richard Wood of York, the move to 60-62 St Martin's Lane in 1754 and the family firm's occupation of it until 1813, the partners James Rannie, Thomas Haig and Henry Ferguson, the Director editions of 1754, 1755 and 1762, and the son Thomas the younger (1749-1822) and his 1813 bankruptcy. Flagged for replacement with Christopher Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale (1978). - [8] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Three Graces dressing commode plate, DSC01891 by Daderot. Licence verified at fetch time: LicenseShortName 'Public domain', wikitext {{PD-old-100}} plus {{self|cc-zero}}. Source for the identification of a SECOND Chippendale dressing commode at Harewood, in the Yellow Drawing Room, with marquetry on satinwood with rosewood insets. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.