THE TOPS ATTRIBUTED TO DOMINIC BARTOLI, THE BASES POSSIBLY DESIGNED BY JAMES WYATT, CIRCA 1780 - 85

THE BROOKES OF NORTON PRIORY

The estate at Norton had, since 1134, been the site of an Augustinian priory founded by the 2nd Baron of Halton, but after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 the buildings were broken up and valuables sold. Norton Priory was acquired in 1545 by Sir Richard Brooke (for £1512. 1s) who built a new house on the site, retaining only the Abbot’s lodge and undercroft. The Tudor house was in turn demolished in 1750 by Sir Richard Brooke, 4th Bt, (d.1781) who built a Georgian mansion with more than 55 rooms. He employed James Wyatt in extensively remodeling the house between 1775 – 81.
The Brookes left Norton in 1921, like many houses its upkeep had become prohibitive, and the Georgian house was finally demolished in 1928.

DOMENICO BARTOLI – THE SCAGLIOLIST

The tables are superb examples of the work of Domenico (Dominic) Bartoli (circa 1740 – circa 1810). Inspired by Robert Adam, they incorporate many original design features by one of the two great scagliolists of the 18th century and the only one, since we have so little documentary evidence for Pietro Bossi’s work, to whom we can confidently attribute pieces.
Bartoli, born in Leghorn, Italy, in about 1740, was in London working as a marble carver by 1761. In 1763 he was employed as a scagliolist by William Constable at Burton Constable in Yorkshire where, over the subsequent four years, he produced four major works in scagliola inlay, one of which, the State Bed Dressing Room chimneypiece, is the first recorded instance of inlay work on white marble. He also produced the Constable family Coat of Arms in scagliola which, since we know the intended colours, has proved useful in determining how colours in the scagliola deteriorate over time – red colours becoming brown and greens fading to blue as a result of the failure of yellow pigment.
In 1767 Dominic Bartoli, with his son Guisseppe, formed a partnership with John August Richter (fl. 1767 – 96), sharing premises in Great Newport Street, London, They worked primarily for Robert Adam (d.1792), architect to the King’s Board of Works and leading exponent of the prevailing neo-classical style whose Works in Architecture was published in 1777 (2nd ed.). Richter took out a patent protecting his technique (1770, no. 978) (Conor O’Neill, 'In Search of Bossi’, Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, 1998, vol. I, p. 152). The first pair of tables that the partners made to Adam’s designs, for the Earl of Coventry, were inlaid on a coloured rectangular slab in the Italianate manner, but Adam soon invented a new fashion using semi-circular or D-shaped slabs of white marble.
All the subsequent tables Richter & Bartoli produced to Adam’s designs follow the same template – three running bands of decoration, a border, a central band, and an inner band with a stylized fan at the centre of the straight (back) edge so that if two tables are placed back to back they form a continuous pattern.
Tables of this pattern designed by Adam and produced by Richter and Bartoli were supplied for Syon House and Osterley House, both in Middlesex, and Nostell Priory, Yorkshire.
Bartoli’s partnership with Richter lasted until about 1777 after which he worked on his own account, producing both inlay and architectural scagliola for a number of patrons. His most prolific and longstanding patron was the architect James Wyatt for whom he undertook a number of commissions including making columns for the Pantheon in Oxford Street in 1772 , for the saloon at 15 St James’s Square in 1794 and for the entrance hall at Castle Coole in Co. Fermanagh in 1795 and pilasters for Cobham in 1791. When Wyatt died in 1813 among his many debts was one of £3000.00 ‘to the plasterer Bartoli’.

THE TOPS

Bartoli continued to produce table tops based on Adam’s earlier template but now incorporating elements of original design. Most, such as the tops at Malahide Castle Co. Dublin and in the National Museum in Dublin follow the template quite closely but an attractive top at Russborough, Co. Wicklow, has an unusually broad border and a very narrow central band of decoration. The Bute table top has a broad border and omits the central band altogether.
The present pair of tables, although orthodox in conception, have several distinctly Bartolian touches. The central fan imitates a breccia marble - Bartoli was very skilled at reproducing marbles, there is a large table in 'porphyry' by him at Burton Constable. The stylized leaves which edge the fan are very similar to those framing the central medallion of the scagliola floor in the Ante Room at Syon House, designed by Adam and originally executed by Richter & Bartoli. The inner band of decoration has a broad ribbon interwoven with vine leaves set between bands of black and gold. The broad ribbon was a favourite device of Bartoli’s, first used on the jambs of the State Bed Dressing Room chimneypiece at Burton Constable. Timothy Lightoler (d.1769), the architect who designed the chimneypiece, drew a pattern of vine leaves on the jambs but Bartoli replaced these with a ribbon and oak leaves. He used the same motif again as a border on a pair of tables in an Irish collection and on a table formerly in the collection of Charles Agar, Archbishop of Dublin (d. 1809) he used a double ribbon intertwined with oak leaves. In this instance, as is not uncommon, the yellow pigment has failed in the mixture for green turning the vine leaves and the ribbon blue
The central band has contiguous circles of bellflowers and laurel centred by medallions. These circles are unusual – generally the medallions on the central band are set within loops of bellflowers as at Nostell Priory, but the Osterley table, one of the Syon tables, and the Archbishop Agar table all have circular motifs.
The outer border is contained within two narrow bands of black set with beads. The border consists of a scrolling design of anthemion and palmette, perhaps inspired by the palmette borders on the tables at Osterley and Nostell. It has striking similarities to the frieze of the chimneypiece in the Third George Room at Burghley, Lincolnshire, which Bartoli executed in 1784, and these tops appear to be of very similar date.

JAMES WYATT (1746 – 1813)

James Wyatt succeeded Robert Adam as the 'most fashionable architect ' and 'the first in his line' after the opening in 1772 of the Pantheon, the 'stately pleasure dome' in Oxford Street, London that Wyatt had designed. Horace Walpole declared it 'the most beautiful edifice in England', and the public was no less enthusiastic. It was a turning point in the careers of both Wyatt and Adam. Wyatt became the dominant figure while Adam received no significant country house commissions after 1774, indeed Wyatt took over several projects that had formerly been Adam's. Meanwhile James Wyatt's brother Samuel had been employed as Adam's Clerk of Works at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, and the team of craftsmen that Adam had assembled at Kedleston, including the scagliolist
Domenico Bartoli, were to work with the Wyatt family on numerous projects until their deaths.
Wyatt was also a prolific and accomplished designer of furniture and, working in the fashionable neoclassical style of the day, would reate a complete architectural room unified down to the smallest detail (John Martin Robinson, James Wyatt Architect to George III,
London, 2011, pp. 13 - 57 and 144 - 165). He also designed furniture for the Lancaster firm of Gillows, including a set of dining-chairs supplied to Sir Thomas Egerton for Heaton House, Manchester in 1774, the original drawing for which was discovered in a Parisian collection (Susan Stuart, Gillows of Lancaster and London, Woodbridge, 2008, vol. I, p. 158 - 159, pl. 108 & 109).
The present tables, displaying ribbon-tied swags and oval paterae on the friezes and with foliate-wrapped legs are designed in the neoclassical style introduced by Robert Adam, and widely adopted by his contemporaries including James Wyatt. A similar frieze pattern was displayed on a marquetry and giltwood table, attributed to the Golden Square cabinet-makers Messrs. Mayhew & Ince, which was offered for sale anonymously Christie’s, New York, 21 May 2014, lot 112. The spiral wrapping of the reeded legs is similar to that on two pairs of tables at Saltram, Devon, both executed by Joseph Perfetti in 1771, the first pair to a design by Adam, the second pair perhaps by Perfetti himself (Eileen Harris, The Furniture Designs of Robert Adam, London, 1963, pp. 69 – 70, and pl. 21 & 22). A demi-lune pier table designed by Wyatt for the saloon at Castle Coole, Co. Fermanagh in the 1790s featured similar leaf caps and spiral turned legs (John Martin Robinson, op. cit., p. 160, fig. 160) , while a Gillows design of 1793 illustrates a painted pier table with spiral wrapped decoration to the legs (Lindsay Boynton, Gillow Furniture Designs, Royston, 1995, fig. 10).
Given the close working relationship between Bartoli and Wyatt, and the characteristically wholesale manner in which Wyatt is likely to have remodelled Norton for Sir Richard Brooke, it seems highly likely that Wyatt was responsible for the design of the giltwood tables.

We are grateful to Donald Cameron for his help in writing this note.