Lot Essay
These shelves, elegantly inlaid in the French 'antique' manner and embellished with golden libation paterae appropriate for the display of Sèvres vases, ewers etc., were commissioned for Castle Howard, Yorkshire by Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825) and his Countess, Margaret Leveson Gower, daughter of Granville, 1st Marquess of Stafford. They appear to have been designed, to correspond with the chimneypiece, for the state bedroom, now called the Orleans Room, since the Earl many years later hung it with paintings from the Duke of Orleans' collection. The chimneypiece, which was no doubt designed by King George III's architect Sir William Chambers (d. 1796) when he was employed soon after the Earl's coming of age in the late 1760s, has its green verde antico frieze hung in white marble with laurel-festooned cameo-medallions of festive female figures
The shelves, with their acanthus-bud brackets beneath eared tablets, also correspond with a French style commode with 'sacred urn' inlay that was also probably designed for the bedroom apartment's window-pier and bears the inscription of the Parisian trained specialist 'inlayer' Christopher Furlohg (d. circa 1787) and the date 1767 (see H. Hayward and P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, fig. 109). Furlohg, like his Swedish compatriot Georg Haupt (d. 1784) is currently thought to have worked with William and John Linnell, cabinet-makers and upholsterers of Berkeley Square, before establishing his own Tottenham Court Road workshops. The commode's pattern features in the firm's sketch-books, now preserved at the Victoria & Albert Museum (Hayward, op.cit., fig. 108); festooned paterae and eared tablets with acanthus-brackets feature in their card-table pattern (Hayward, ibid., fig. 293), and the ormolu paterae with inlaid garlands held by acanthus-bud nails appear on Pembroke tables supplied by the Linnells for Hugh, 1st Duke of Northumberland (d. 1786) (Hayward, ibid., fig. 291). The inlay also relates to that of a table which Chambers designed for his own use and had made by Haupt in 1796 (Hayward, ibid., fig. 295)
The shelves, with their acanthus-bud brackets beneath eared tablets, also correspond with a French style commode with 'sacred urn' inlay that was also probably designed for the bedroom apartment's window-pier and bears the inscription of the Parisian trained specialist 'inlayer' Christopher Furlohg (d. circa 1787) and the date 1767 (see H. Hayward and P. Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, fig. 109). Furlohg, like his Swedish compatriot Georg Haupt (d. 1784) is currently thought to have worked with William and John Linnell, cabinet-makers and upholsterers of Berkeley Square, before establishing his own Tottenham Court Road workshops. The commode's pattern features in the firm's sketch-books, now preserved at the Victoria & Albert Museum (Hayward, op.cit., fig. 108); festooned paterae and eared tablets with acanthus-brackets feature in their card-table pattern (Hayward, ibid., fig. 293), and the ormolu paterae with inlaid garlands held by acanthus-bud nails appear on Pembroke tables supplied by the Linnells for Hugh, 1st Duke of Northumberland (d. 1786) (Hayward, ibid., fig. 291). The inlay also relates to that of a table which Chambers designed for his own use and had made by Haupt in 1796 (Hayward, ibid., fig. 295)