VARIOUS PROPERTIES
A REGENCY BRASS-MOUNTED AND INLAID EBONY, EBONISED AND PARCEL-GILT BONHEUR-DU-JOUR

Details
A REGENCY BRASS-MOUNTED AND INLAID EBONY, EBONISED AND PARCEL-GILT BONHEUR-DU-JOUR
Inlaid overall with brass lines and stylised foliate sprays, the pierced three-quarter galleried two-tiered superstructure with brass balusters and downswept supports, the counterbalanced, hinged slope enclosing a fitted interior with seven arched pigeon-holes above two cedar-lined drawers, a pen compartment and writing surface, one long drawer with a further simulated drawer, the sides each also with one drawer and one simulated drawer, on X-framed trestle-end supports joined by an arched stretcher, brass caps and castors, inscribed in pen to the back of one drawer '11503', another with indistinct pencil inscription: '3 Letter Holes.../The centre.../The other 2 as long as..../Blue leather and a .... Border.../Desk top to lift with Lock will be sent By Ld. Longford', restorations
30¼in. (76.5cm.) wide; 58¼in. (148cm.) high; 18¼in. (46.5cm.) deep
Provenance
Supplied to Thomas Pakenham, 2nd Earl of Longford, probably for Pakenham Hall (now Tullynally Castle), Castlepollard, co. Westmeath

Lot Essay

The Etruscan-black bureau with fitted bookshelves relates to an 1802 'Bureau Bookcase' pattern illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet Dictionary, 1803, pl. 23. It is embellished in the French antique manner with brass columnettes and inlays of ribbon-bands, enriched with arabesque foliage, while its serpentined horn-like trestles are reed-banded in the manner of another Sheraton pattern of 1802 for an Etruscan-scrolled chair (op. cit, pl. 5). This desk may have formed part of the furnishings introduced to Tullynally Castle, co. Westmeath at the time that Thomas Pakenham 2nd Earl of Lonford (d.1835) employed the architect Francis Johnston to aggrandise the house between 1803-6.

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