The glazed lantern is designed in the George II French 'picturesque' style with birds perched on the branches of its ogival-scrolled and flamed-finialed canopy springing from its serpentined and acanthus-wrapped cornice. Its octagon form recalls the mosaic ceiling-compartments of the Sun God Apollo's Temple, illustrated in Robert Wood's, Ruins of the Temple at Palmyra, 1753, while flower-festooned shells of the nature Goddess Venus, symbolising Peace and Plenty, embellish the paired pilasters of its cut-corners, and its triumphal-arched panels display festive masks of Pan, ruler of Arcadia. A related pattern from a hollow-cornered 'lanthorn' featured in the 3rd. edition of Thomas Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1762, pl. CLIII, no. A. It was shown alongside a chandelier crowned by a Ducal coronet (no. C) and another, displaying the Dumfries 'Wyvern' crest accompanied by bull-maces (no. B; see: C. Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. II, figs. 252-3 and 255).

CARLTON HALL
Carlton Hall, now called Carlton Towers, is the ancient home of the Stapleton family who in 1840 successfully claimed the Beaumont barony that had been extinct since 1507. The house was much altered during the long tenure of Thomas Stapleton from 1750 to 1821. He continued the process begun by his father of modernising the Jacobean interiors. Although it was not until 1770 that he began the huge new east wing to the designs of Thomas Atkinson (d.1798), it seems likely that this lantern was acquired as part of earlier redecoartions. The wing was again altered for the 9th Lord Beaumont in the 1870s, the exterior by E.W. Pugin, the interior by J.F. Bentley, in which much of the 18th Century furniture and fittings were displaced.