Lot Essay
This elaborately carved and moulded table evokes the 'Gothick' taste as championed by garden designer, author and freemason Batty Langley (1696-1751). A known eccentric, Langley was lambasted for his 'clumsy efforts for real imitations' by Horace Walpole, but succeeded in influencing a generation of architects and designers with his 1747 publication Gothic Architecture, improved by Rules and Proportions. Shrewsbury born architect Thomas Farnolls-Pritchard (bap.1723-d.1777) was one such exponent of Langley's style. A joiner, supplier of chimney pieces and other aspects of interior decoration, his legacy includes a funary monument to Mary Morhall (d.1765) at St. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury and the interior plasterwork of the famous Pitchford Tree House in Shropshire.
Isabel and Julian Bannerman commissioned this table after the model belonging to David Vicary at Kilvert's Parsonage, Chippenham, Wiltshire.
Inspired and influenced by John Fowler, David Vicary was an architect, decorator and garden designer. His enthusiasm for and extensive knowledge of English Country Houses informed his aesthetic sensibility and led him to purchase Kilvert's Parsonage, a rustic Palladian Villa dated 1739, in 1964.
Isabel and Julian Bannerman commissioned this table after the model belonging to David Vicary at Kilvert's Parsonage, Chippenham, Wiltshire.
Inspired and influenced by John Fowler, David Vicary was an architect, decorator and garden designer. His enthusiasm for and extensive knowledge of English Country Houses informed his aesthetic sensibility and led him to purchase Kilvert's Parsonage, a rustic Palladian Villa dated 1739, in 1964.