BY MAURICE TOBIN, LEEDS, CIRCA 1750

Two grates by the metalworker Maurice Tobin of Briggate in Leeds are illustrated in The Fashionable Fireplace 1660-1840, one of which is closely related to the present example (Christopher Gilbert, Anthony Wells-Cole, The Fashionable Fire Place 1660-1840, Leeds, 2008, p. 25, figs. 6 and 7). The second, a double stove grate, was supplied by Tobin between 1769 and 73 to Edwin Lascelles of Harewood House, Leeds, one of the most sumptuous and complete of all neoclassical English country house interiors, for the Robert Adam designed Tapestry Room, furnished by Thomas Chippendale. The grate is stamped 'TOBIN LEEDS 1522' which includes a pattern number that is sometimes quoted in the Harewood papers in reference to Tobin. Tobin also supplied a wide variety of other metalwork goods to Harewood from as early as 1757. Both of these comparable grates are now at Newby Hall, near Ripon. Tobin was a prolific craftsman, an obituary in 1773 described him as 'the most eminent in his profession of any in the North of England', a quote that is substantiated by two entries in an inventory of furniture at Serlby Hall, Nottinghamshire, taken in 1774, that lists in the Dining Room 'Grate (M. Tobin) Leeds' and in the Drawing Room 'Range (maker Morice Tobin Leeds)' suggesting that they too were signed (ibid. pp. 61-62).
Tobin also supplied fire grates and other associated metalwork to Wentworth Woodhouse and the aforementioned Newby Hall both of which are connected to Howsham Hall through the female line.