Lot Essay
The steel register grate, with golden bas-reliefs, is reputed to have been designed by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d. 1831), and reflects his French/antique style. Its ornament corresponds in part to the decoration of an Egyptian room in Hope's Duchess Street mansion/museum and a breakfast-room dedicated to the dawn-goddess Aurora, whose starred diadem embellished its mantlepiece (T. Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807). This grate's star-enriched frieze also displays Jupiter's fiery thunderbolt and flowered tablets, while its pilasters are embellished with pedestal-supported Egyptian mummies and flowered Isis horns. An 1811 trade catalogue featuring this type of grate including Egyptian ornament was printed by Messrs M & G Skidmore, Founders and Stove grate manufacturers of High Holborn and Coppice Row, Clerkenwell (C. Gilbert, The Fashionable Fire Place, Leeds, 1985, pp. 57, 58 and fig. 11)