BY HOLLAND AND SONS, LATE 19TH CENTURY

These beds formed part of a bedroom suite that may have been acquired for the 'Robert Adam' mansion at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire by Sir Julius Wernher (d. 1912), whose purchase of the property from the trustees of John Shaw Leigh's estate took place in 1903. With their golden veneer of silken satinwood inlaid with Grecian ribbon frets and palm-flowered tablets, they relate to elegant furniture manufactured around 1880 by Messrs Holland & Sons 'after old examples by Sheraton, Adam and Chippendale'. The latter received praise as being 'good examples of the adaption of the 18th-century designs to modern furniture' in Colonel Robert Edis's Decoration and Furniture of Town Houses, 1880. The celebrated Mayfair firm also exhibited a greatly praised bedroom suite, likewise 'finished in satin-wood in the Adams style' at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1878, when it was acquired by Sir Richard Wallace. The Exhibition suite furnished Lady Wallace's Hertford House, London in the early 1890s before being acquired about 1896 by Sir Julius and Lady Wernher, while furnishing their London residence in Piccadilly. There is a possibility that this present suite was made to harmonise with the later Paris Exhibition pieces, sold from the Collection of the late Sir Harold Wernher, Bt., G.C.V.O., Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, Sotheby's, London, 24-25 May 1995, lots 43-54.
A pair of tall chests and a pair of bedside cupboards by Holland and Sons and part of the same suite, were sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 15 June 2000, lots 141 and 142.