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Lot Essay
It appears that these bookcases were moved in the 19th Century, this fact being supported by listings of hours spent working on them inscribed on the backboards. There is a possibility that they were adapted for relocation, and it is also possible that the smaller bookcase, marked 'No 3', was originally larger.
The bookcases were commissioned for Stapleford Hall, Leicestershire by Robert, 4th Earl of Harborough (1719-1799), cleric and builder of Stapleford Church, and are designed in the chaste George III 'antique' fashion of the late 1770s. Their 'commode' chest-of-drawers are embellished with ormolu handles, conceived in the French Grecian manner, and featuring laurel-wreathed libation-paterae that evoke lyric poetry and Apollo's triumph on Mount Parnassus.
The commode doors of beautiful flame-figured mahogany have pan-reeded frames, that are similarly enriched with paterae and French-hollowed corners. The bookcases' ornament and rectilinear form were popularised some ten years later, when Messrs. A. Hepplewhite & Co. issued their pattern-book, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788. They noted that Library Bookcases were usually made of the finest mahogany: the doors of fine waved or curled wood (plates 45-48).
The bookcases would have been made to harmonise with the 'antique' ornament that had been introduced to the house in the late 1760s under the direction of the architect George Richardson (d. 1813), who also served as 'architect' for the church that was built in the early 1780s. Richardson had been employed for a period of almost twenty years as 'designer and draughtsman' in the Office of Robert Adam (d. 1792), and he was also the author of various pattern-books such as A Book of Ceilings composed in the Stile of the Antique Grotesque, 1774-6 and Iconology, or a Collection of Emblematical Figures, 1779-1780. The bookcases bear the pencilled inscription of John Johnstone & Sons, which may be the same firm listed as 'Johnstone of London' as subscribed to Thomas Sheraton's Drawing Book, 1793 (The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 493). The fine ormolu handles correspond to patterns illustrated in some 18th Century metalwork books preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Collection of Metalwork Pattern Books, Furniture History, 1975, pp. 1-30 and figs. 35 and 36). They may have been supplied by the Bury Street firm run by Richard Gascoigne, as the bookcases are fitted with hinges bearing the brand of Richard's predecessor, Edward Gascoigne.
The bookcases were commissioned for Stapleford Hall, Leicestershire by Robert, 4th Earl of Harborough (1719-1799), cleric and builder of Stapleford Church, and are designed in the chaste George III 'antique' fashion of the late 1770s. Their 'commode' chest-of-drawers are embellished with ormolu handles, conceived in the French Grecian manner, and featuring laurel-wreathed libation-paterae that evoke lyric poetry and Apollo's triumph on Mount Parnassus.
The commode doors of beautiful flame-figured mahogany have pan-reeded frames, that are similarly enriched with paterae and French-hollowed corners. The bookcases' ornament and rectilinear form were popularised some ten years later, when Messrs. A. Hepplewhite & Co. issued their pattern-book, The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide, 1788. They noted that Library Bookcases were usually made of the finest mahogany: the doors of fine waved or curled wood (plates 45-48).
The bookcases would have been made to harmonise with the 'antique' ornament that had been introduced to the house in the late 1760s under the direction of the architect George Richardson (d. 1813), who also served as 'architect' for the church that was built in the early 1780s. Richardson had been employed for a period of almost twenty years as 'designer and draughtsman' in the Office of Robert Adam (d. 1792), and he was also the author of various pattern-books such as A Book of Ceilings composed in the Stile of the Antique Grotesque, 1774-6 and Iconology, or a Collection of Emblematical Figures, 1779-1780. The bookcases bear the pencilled inscription of John Johnstone & Sons, which may be the same firm listed as 'Johnstone of London' as subscribed to Thomas Sheraton's Drawing Book, 1793 (The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p. 493). The fine ormolu handles correspond to patterns illustrated in some 18th Century metalwork books preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Collection of Metalwork Pattern Books, Furniture History, 1975, pp. 1-30 and figs. 35 and 36). They may have been supplied by the Bury Street firm run by Richard Gascoigne, as the bookcases are fitted with hinges bearing the brand of Richard's predecessor, Edward Gascoigne.