CIRCA 1745

This handsome multi-purpose piece of furniture is designed in the George II 'Roman' fashion and relates to 'Bureau Dressing Table' patterns issued by Thomas Chippendale in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, (see 1st ed., 1754, pl. 79 and 3rd ed., 1762, pl. 62). Its triumphal-arch key-stone displays a veil-draped vestal as popularised by chimneypiece patterns after the 'antique' manner of Inigo Jones, such as Edward Hoppus issued in The Gentleman and Builder's Repository, 1737. A contemporary pattern for 'a Dressing Table with Drapery enriched after the French Manner', was published alongside a 1739 pattern for one such Corinthian 'vestal' frontispiece in B. Langley, The City and Country Builders' and Workmans' Treasury of Designs, 1740 (pls. 36 and 118). Evoking 'the toilet of Venus', the commode-table is wreathed in French fashion by a pearled ribbon-guilloche and its hollowed 'altar' pillars are raised on wave-scrolled Roman truss feet that are enwreathed by Roman acanthus. Picturesque shell-scalloped ormolu handles embellish the sides, where richly-figured tablets are framed in 'Pan' reed moldings with hollowed corners enriched by pearled libation-paterae.

It is likely to have been designed en suite with a window-pier mirror, whose frieze would have shown beribboned veil drapery in the manner of a set of pier-glasses and overmantel mirror commissioned by the Earl of Hopetoun and attributable to the Edinburgh wright Francis Brodie of the 'Looking Glass and cabinet-warehouse' (C. Wood (ed.), Hopetoun House Guide Book, c. 1980, pl. 10 and F. Bamford, Dictionary of Edinburgh Wrights and Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1983, pp. 46-8).