3-008-754 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Silver repoussé table manufactured by Messrs. Elkington and Co., in the International Exhibition, 1862. 'This work, the ornamental portion of which was designed and executed by Morel Ladeuil, is intended to portray the poetical influences of sleep by the picturing in dreams of the ideal pursuit after happiness in our waking existence. To carry out the idea with simplicity, the artist has limited himself to three principal figures, symbolising Agriculture, Music, and War, who, in the persons of a husbandman, a minstrel, and a soldier, are sleeping on the tripod base, surrounded with the instruments of their various callings, habited in the picturesque costumes of the middle ages, and grouped about the stem; round which is intertwined the poppy, with the moth against its leaves...The border is a fantastic creation, in the German manner, of monsters and reptiles, being intended to represent how hideous fancies will sometimes mingle with the fairer visions of the night. The whole composition is surmounted by a statuette of the Goddess of Sleep strewing the slumber-laden poppy over the world'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.