CIRCA 1780

Details

A GEORGE III MAHOGANY HANGING BOOKCASE
CIRCA 1780
The moulded cornice above astragal glazed doors enclosing a mahogany lined interior with three adjustable shelves, below two drawers with ebony borders, original handles
48 in. (122 cm.) high; 37½ in. (95 cm.) wide; 8¼ in. (21 cm.) deep

Literature

Inventory and Valuation of the contents of Newton Hall, Felton, Morpeth, Northumberland, The Property of Brigadier General B. F. Widdrington, C.M.G., D.S.O., 1925, p. 31.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

This glazed and drawer-fitted bookcase, perhaps intended for a bureau/commode, has its reeded door astragals mosaic-fretted with poetic sun-rayed oval medallions; while its drawers reflect the Etruscan fashion promoted in the 1770s by architects, such as Robert Adam (d.1792). Within reed-scrolled and ebony borders, they display golden bas-relief paterae/libation-plates enriched with Venus pearls. The plain ringed handle substitutes the poetic laurel wreath featured on this pattern of double-pearled plate illustrated as no. 1837 in a late l8th century Birmingham brass-founder's catalogue (sold Christie's London, 15 April 1999 lot 37).

A related bookcase-door astragal pattern, with lozenged compartment in place of the central oval, was published in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Drawing Book, 1793 (no 7 in pl. XXVII).

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