IN THE MANNER OF GEORGE BULLOCK

The plinth-supported bookcase is designed in the early 19th Century Grecian manner, and embellished in the French fashion with festive trophies, evoking bucolic poetry. Musical trophies of pastoral pan-pipes and tambourines are ribbon-tied to bacchic ivy-entwined and pine-tipped thyrsae, such as feature on a sideboard pattern issued in 1825 in Rudolph Ackermann's The Repository of Arts (P. Agius, Ackermann's Regency Furniture and Interiors, London, 1984, p. 152, pl. 147). Ackermann considered that furniture should be 'a source of delightful contemplation' and explained that the artist, who designed the sideboard had bestowed upon it 'the result of his studies amongst the works of the Greeks and Romans, by which his designs have become classical and imposing'. Ackermann had previously illustrated a piece of furniture in this style that was executed by the cabinet-maker John Durham, who had recently succeeded to the Catherine Street workshops of Messrs Morgan and Sanders (P. Agius, op. cit., pl. 136).