CIRCA 1765, IN THE MANNER OF THOMAS CHIPPENDALE

The clothes-press/wardrobe, with vase-plinth incorporated in its hollow-scalloped Tuscan temple pediment, is designed in the Roman manner popularised by Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Directors, 1754-62. In particular its silken-figured mahogany tablets are reed-banded with hollowed corners in the manner featured on one of his 1760 dressing-table patterns (see Cippendale, ibid, 3rd ed., 1762, pls. LXXVII and LXVII). Chippendale also introduced the later on a clothes-press, with similarly scalloped feet, that he provided in 1766 for Nostell Priory, Yorkshire; while another supplied there the following year featured a similar pediment (see C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, 1978, fig. 244). The brass escutcheon, with lozenge fretted compartment, relates closely to mid-18th century Birmingham metal patterns (see T.R. Crom, An Eighteenth century English Brass Hardware Catalogue, Florida, 1994, p. 67).