Lot Essay
The quality of these 'Adam' ormolu-mounted, painted and inlaid corner cupboards typifies the work of the Bond Street firm of Messrs. Wright and Mansfield (fl. 1860-1886), whose related award-winning cabinet, designed by Mr. Crosse, was exhibited at the Paris 1867 Exhibition, before being acquired by the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum (see R.W. Symonds and B. Whinneray, Victorian Furniture, London, 1962, p. 45). Related flower-wreathed medallions featured on their cabinet exhibited at the Philadelphia 1876 Exhibition and illustrated in G.W. Yapp's Art Industry, 1879 (pl. CIII) . Wright and Mansfield made the cabinet, sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 15 October 1981, lot 171 and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The medallions of these corner cupboards depict cupid-attended Erminia, derived from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Cupid and Psyche, and are executed in the fashion popularised by Angelika Kauffmann (d. 18l0) and adopted for furniture in the 1770s. In 1886 Wright and Mansfield received praise for their ability: 'The best forms of Chippendale, Hepplewhite and particularly Sheraton have been made to live again under the renovating influence of these able manufacturers' (The Cabinet Maker, July l886).