MID-19TH CENTURY

Details

A PAIR OF EARLY VICTORIAN OAK WINE-COOLERS
MID-19TH CENTURY
Each of canted rectangular shape, the moulded edge above a tapering panelled body carved with Gothic tracery and centred to the front with a lion's mask issuing from foliage, the waisted socle above a similarly facetted and stepped plinth, fitted with later metal liner, on later simulated marble stepped pedestals
20½ in. (52 cm.) high; 32¼ in. (82 cm.) wide; 24½ in. (62 cm.) deep [without later pedestals] (2)

Special notice

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Lot Essay

These handsome oak sideboard-cisterns, with bacchic lions emerging from the rose-flowered, trefoiled and lozenged compartments of plinth-supported 'sarcophagi', epitomise George IV romanticism in dressing French/antique forms with mediaeval 'gothic' ornament. Their pattern was published in 1826 in The Practical Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and Complete Decorator, issued by the cabinet-maker Peter Nicholson and his son Michael Angelo, who claimed that some of their illustrations were taken 'from the purest classical models' of the period 'when the arts and sciences were in the very zenith of perfection'.

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