The bed cornice, painted in the French fashion with a guilloche of a yellow ribbon looped by green ribbons and with palm-flowered fringe, is likely to have been commissioned in the later 1770s for Uppark, West Sussex, by Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, 2nd Bt. (1754-1846). Its lambrequined fringe, such as featured on a bed in Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 3rd ed., 1762 (pls. XXXI and XLIII), relates to that of a painted bed which Chippendale supplied for Petworth, Sussex in 1778 (C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, fig. 56). This cornice may possibly belong to the 'Painted 4 post bedstead' listed in the Best Bedroom in the 1874 Inventory of Household Furniture at Uppark. The top part of the bed-head, which may have been adapted from a window-pelmet of the 1770s, is embellished with a grisaille, tablet that depicts the sporting youths of antiquity firing arrows at a target.

We are grateful to Charles O'Brien Esq. for the information about the 1874 Uppark Inventory.