An extraordinary run of English mahogany-veneered ship's panelling

c.1905, by Mellier & Co. for the 1st Class Lounge on R.M.S. Mauretania (1905-36), an interior designed by Sir Harold Peto,

five large sections of curved parcel gilt panels, each comprising two short panels above two large rectangular fielded panels, a chair rail - richly relief-carved with a running guilloche moulding, and two short panels below (some as hidden cupboard doors), with a plain skirting, the vertical intervals panelled with low mouldings in corresponding registers; the fielded panels quartered and book-match veneered, the raised mouldings carved with lambrequin ornament, stamped to the rear "Mellier & Co."

Dimensions: 311cm (122^½") High, 220cm (86^½") Wide, approximately

Price: POA

Stock Code: 46127

History

The five panels formed some of the four curved bays, two port and two starboard, that flanked the 1st Class “Lounge & Music Room” on the boat deck of RMS Mauretania – Cunard’s famous Blue Riband liner.

Built on the Tyne in 1905, the Mauretania when launched, was the largest movable man-made object ever made. Her boilers and turbines were ground-breaking – she was made for speed. No expense was spared on her fit-out – Harold Peto was brought in to design the most lavish and beautiful interior ever seen on a liner. The double height “Dining Room”, the “Lounge and Music Room” (from which this panelling was salvaged), the “Library and Reading Room” and “Smoking Room” were fabulous 1st Class accommodations that were accessed with sought-after tickets on both sides of the Atlantic from Edwardian times and through the roaring twenties.

Click here for an expanded history of the ship and the panelling: its design, the makers of it, its life on board the ship, how it survived the scrapping of the ship and how LASSCO came to acquire it. And Click here to view another suite of panelling we have also salvaged from the same First Class deck of the Mauretania – the Entrance Lobby, again to Peto’s design but these clad in walnut and made by Mssrs W. Lord Turner & Co.

Condition: The carved chair rail is largely intact on one panel, but is either absent or fragmentary on the rest. The gilding and mouldings on some of the raised ornament is distressed in places. Two of the curved sections each have one of their principle panels removed – a close examination of the photographs informs that these voids were the location of coved niches. Please “Make an Enquiry” for more detailed condition reports.