EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Details

A GEORGE I BLACK AND GILT-LACQUER BUREAU-CABINET
EARLY 18TH CENTURY
The rectangular moulded cornice above a cavetto frieze and a pair of doors with arched bevelled plates, enclosing four adjustable shelves, the bureau section with a flap decorated with figures and animals in a landscape enclosing a fitted interior of pigeon-holes and drawers above a well with a sliding cover, above a pair of doors decorated with scenes of a lion hunt enclosing an adjustable shelf, on later bun feet, the reverse with newspaper dated 24 November 1861, the bureau lacking lock, with label in pen-drawer inscribed 'LADY ST OSWALD'S OR MRS WINN'S BEDROOM 14', lacking one interior drawer
82 in. (208 cm.) high; 42½ in. (108 cm.) wide; 23 in. (58.5 cm.) deep

Provenance

Possibly supplied to Sir Rowland Winn, 3rd Bt. (1675-1722) or his son, Sir Rowland Winn, 4th Bt. (1706-1765), and by descent.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis This lot is subject to Collection and Storage charges

Lot Essay

The bureau, designed in the George I style, is decorated with birds in whimsical Chinese gardens after the 'India' fashion popularised by John Stalker and George Parker's Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, Oxford, 1688. Among the leading cabinet-makers working in this manner was the St. Paul's Church Yard cabinet-maker John Belchier (d. 1753), who is believed to have supplied a related bureau-cabinet listed in 1726 in a bedroom at Erddig, Wrexham, Clywd (M. Drury, 'Early Eighteenth-Century Furniture at Erddig', Apollo, July 1978, pp. 52-53, pl. 11).
If this bureau was acquired for Nostell Priory, Yorkshire by Sir Rowland Winn, 4th Baronet (d. 1765), it may have inspired the similarly decorated bedroom furnishings that were executed in the 1770s by Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779) for Sir Rowland Winn, 4th Baronet (see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, fig. 214).

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