Lot Essay
The book-cabinet's triumphal arched temple pediment, in the George II 'Roman' fashion, relates to a 'Tuscan' bookcase pattern as featured in B. Langley's Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740 (pl. 27) and to a patterned pediment which displays a sacred urn within a scallop-fretted cartouche that caps a secretaire-cabinet from Dromahair, Co. Leitrim. Its arched door tablets appear on a mid-18th century cabinet probably commissioned by Windham Quin (d. 1789) of Adare, co. Limerick (The Knight of Glin and J. Peill, Irish Furniture, New Haven & London, 2007, pl. 164 and cat. 187).