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Lot Essay
The organ's 'triumphal-arch' case is richly carved with foliated cusps and pinnacles in the 'old English' fashion promoted in the 1750s by Horace Walpole's romantic embellishment of Strawberry Hill, Middlesex and by furnishing patterns issued in Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754-1762. While Chippendale's organ pattern engraved in 1760 and published as 'Plate IV' in the third edition of his Director (1762) was excecuted in his 'Modern' style, he is thought to be the author of a closely related 'Gothic' pattern engraved in the same year. The latter pattern for a triumphal-arched door was engraved by Matthias Darly and issued as 'Plate 59' in the Fleet Street printseller Robert Sayer's Household Furniture in Genteel Taste for the Year 1760, by the Society of Upholsterers, Cabinet-Makers etc. (see Christopher Gilbert's introduction to Genteel Houshold Furniture in the Present Taste, 1977, p. ix). This fanciful 'Gothick' manner was chosen by the architect Robert 'Bob the Roman' Adam (d. 1792) for a chair designed in 1761 for the chapel at Croome Court, Worcestershire. Likewise this style was adopted in the late 1760s and in the 1770s for chapels, which juxtaposed Adam's 'antique' work at Audley End, Essex, and Alnwick Castle, Northumberland and juxtaposed the 'antique' work at Audley End, Essex. This organ was sold in recent times from Harewood House, Yorkshire, which was largely furnished under the direction of Robert Adam by the St. Martin's Lane firm of Thomas Chippendale Senior and Junior. However there is a possibility that it was amongst the furnishings brought there from Goldsborough Hall, Yorkshire. The latter was purchased in 1760 by Daniel Lascelles, who followed the example of his elder brother Edwin Lascelles of Harewood in employing the Yorkshire architect John Carr to aggrandise his house. As the Chippendales supplied gothic style furniture for Goldsborough in the 1770s, it is very likely that they also designed this organ for Daniel Lascelles.