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An extraordinary run of English walnut-veneered ship’s panelling
c.1905, by Messrs. W. Lord Turner & Co. for the 1st Class Entrance Hall and Stairwell on R.M.S. Mauretania (1905-36), an interior designed for Cunard by Sir Harold Peto,
two large sections of panelling, each centred with a rectangle - quartered with book-matched veneer - and flanked by a pair of smaller rectangles, similarly veneered and incorporated within pronounced raised bead-and-reel carved mouldings, plus two further sections of panelling similar but with the central panel omitted, to make a ten metre run and some other associated parts,
£16,500 the lot
These panels lined the walls of the 1st Class Entrance Hall on the boat deck of RMS Mauretania – Cunard’s famous Blue Riband liner. A couple are daubed in paint to the reverse giving the destination during installation “Dining Room Ent Ath” and repeated in blue chalk – the latter the marks of the auctioneer decades later when the ship was stripped at Southampton prior to scrapping in Rosyth. Click here to see another range of panelling we have available – also from the 1st Class deck of the Mauretania, and also to Peto’s designs, but this from the First Class Lounge which was made in mahogany by Mellier and Co.
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”, 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.
Condition: The panelling has survived remarkably well given its long life at sea, incessant cleaning in a busy and smoky interior of a ship that was notorious for her vibration – followed by 88years stowed in a barn. There are abrasions and some lifting and losses to the veneer. The panels were drilled for electric wall sconces. We have two principle panels – similar but not a pair – and two others similar which have the central panel omitted (whether for access panels, niches or mirrors we are not sure) together with more component parts from which other panels can be created – please enquire.