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Lot Essay
This golden lozenge-trellised chimneypiece is designed in the George II 'picturesque' fashion described as 'Modern' in Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1754. It combines the 'antique' with 'India'/Chinese and old English Gothic elements and incorporates brackets for china display appropriate for a bedroom apartment. Beneath a serpentined and reed-gadrooned cornice, its garden trellis is festooned with flowers and incorporates a rustic and triumphal arched temple, whose plinth and flanking niches provide shelves for small flower-vases and porcelain figures. While the frieze is wrapped by Roman acanthus foliage, enriched with water scallops and drips, the chimneypiece's 'gothic' clustered pillars are entwined by climbing shrubs.
The frieze pattern recalls the fashion for 'Gothic' temple and alcove seats popularised by William Pain's, The Builder's Companion and Workman's General Assistant, 1758; and Paul Decker's Gothic Architecture Decorated, 1759 (E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, pp.136-138). Patterns for related chimneypieces in the 'India'/Chinese manner were issued in Matthias Lock and Henry Copland's, New Book of Ornaments, 1752, while patterns for related chimneypieces featured in William Ince and John Mayhew's The Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762 (pl. LXXXV and LXXXVI).
The chimneypiece relates closely to another giltwood example at Donnington Grove, Berkshire, and was almost certainly acquired for the house as part of the acclaimed collection assembled by the late the Hon. Mrs. Daisy Fellowes (see a Harper's Bazaar photograph of 1960 shoing Mrs. Fellowes before the chimneypiece, reproduced in Dreweatt Neate's sale catalogue, Donnington, 30 January 2002, p.127).
The frieze pattern recalls the fashion for 'Gothic' temple and alcove seats popularised by William Pain's, The Builder's Companion and Workman's General Assistant, 1758; and Paul Decker's Gothic Architecture Decorated, 1759 (E. White, Pictorial Dictionary of British 18th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, 1990, pp.136-138). Patterns for related chimneypieces in the 'India'/Chinese manner were issued in Matthias Lock and Henry Copland's, New Book of Ornaments, 1752, while patterns for related chimneypieces featured in William Ince and John Mayhew's The Universal System of Household Furniture, 1762 (pl. LXXXV and LXXXVI).
The chimneypiece relates closely to another giltwood example at Donnington Grove, Berkshire, and was almost certainly acquired for the house as part of the acclaimed collection assembled by the late the Hon. Mrs. Daisy Fellowes (see a Harper's Bazaar photograph of 1960 shoing Mrs. Fellowes before the chimneypiece, reproduced in Dreweatt Neate's sale catalogue, Donnington, 30 January 2002, p.127).