LATE 19TH CENTURY, IN THE MANNER OF CHARLES BEVAN

The geometric stencilled decoration and chamfering is characteristic of Charles Bevan and Joseph Seddon, to whom Bevan was purportedly apprenticed circa 1862. Though Bevan's designs, executed by firms such as Marsh & Jones of Leeds for Titus Salt Jr. of Saltaire and now partially at Lotherton Hall, Leeds, were intended to be executed with the use of inlaid woods having a polychromatic effect, it is not unlikely that smaller firms followed his designs to a similar effect using paint and stencils. Indeed, a wardrobe was sent by Dyer & Watts of Islington to the Paris Exhibition of 1867, with stenciled decoration which was described in the Art Journal Supplement in 1867 'as refreshing to the eye as if the woods imitated had been of the rarest and most costly'. The wardrobe was bought by the Empress of France (J. Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, 1987, p. 101).