BY GILLOWS, MID-19TH CENTURY

Details

AN EARLY VICTORIAN OAK WARDROBE
BY GILLOWS, MID-19TH CENTURY
The rectangular crenellated cornice above three linen-fold panelled doors, the pair of doors on the right enclosing five slides above a shelf and three short drawers and a long drawer, the left door enclosing six brass hooks and a later chromed hanging-rail, lined with glazed cotton, between chamfered uprights each with a roundel carved with stylised initial 'F', the locks stamped 'HOBBS & CO LONDON', the back white-painted, one drawer stamped 'GILLOWS LANCASTER', another drawer stamped 'L 24403'
82 in. (208 cm.) high; 84½ in. (214.5 cm.) wide; 24 in. (61 cm.) deep

Special notice

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Lot Essay

This Elizabethan or medieaval wardrobe pattern was invented in the late 1840's by the architect A. W. N. Pugin (d. 1852), author of Gothic Furniture of the 15th Century, 1835, for the architect Charles Barry's New Palace of Westminster. A smaller version of this wardrobe, executed for the Palace of Westminster and bearing Queen Victoria's VR cypher, was also manufactured in 1852 under the direction of Messrs Gillows of Lancaster and Oxford Street by the cabinet-maker John Herbert, and costed in the firm's Estimate Sketch Book (no. 3828). Its fretted tinned-iron metalwork was executed by Messrs. Hardman and Iliffe of Birmingham (sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 11 April 1991, lot 153). Another is illustrated in situ in R. Cooke, Palace of Westminster, 1987, p. 324. This present wardobe's pair has its truncated handle-plates fixed slightly higher up and was sold anonymously, Christie's, 9 July 1998, lot 138.

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