IN THE MANNER OF PIERRE LANGLOIS

This lady's bureau/dressing-table, elegantly serpentined in the French picturesque fashion, is inlaid with antique flutes and a Roman 'conch shell' medallion in the George III 'Etruscan' fashion promoted around 1770 by the architect Robert 'Bob the Roman' Adam (d. 1792). Serving to evoke Venus, together with the triumph of Neptune and the Water Element, the shell motif is derived from G. B. Piranesi's, Diverse Maniere d'adornare i cammini, Rome, 1769, and the Gaultieri shell collection, which served to illustrate his views on the origins of Etruscan vases (J. Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, San Francisco, vol. II, 1994, nos. 819 and 820). The antiquarian use of 17th Century cinquefoil-patera handles, corresponds to the embellishment of related marquetry bedroom commodes, which were supplied in 1768 by James Cullen for Hopetoun House, Scotland and decorated with richly fretted 17th Century escutcheon plates (A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, fig. 416). In 1766 Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) supplied a related slide-fitted table for Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, and it is possible that this table was also acquired for Nostell by Sir Rowland Winn, 5^th Bt. (d. 1785).