SECOND QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

This bedside cabinet, with its black-figured veneer enhanced with gilded mouldings, is designed in the 'chaste and elegant' manner lauded in R.Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 1814. It evolved from the Grecian and French antique styles promoted by George Smith in whose Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1808, it was noted that such 'pot cupboards' were 'ornamental articles ... to be placed on each side of the bed; the upper shelf serving for china, either for ornament or use, and forming at the same time a Table useful in case of indispostion' (ibid., pl. 130). In particular its style relates to that of bedroom apartment furnishings supplied in 1817 for Tew Park, Oxford by George Bullock (d. 1819) (C. Wainwright et al, George Bullock: Cabinet-maker, London, 1988, nos. 28 and 29).