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Lot Essay
The library-cabinet, with its 'Grecian' plinth and 'Pompeian' columnar corners, is designed in the antique style popularised by C. Percier and P.F.L. Fontaine's, Receuil de Décorations Interieures, 1801 (2nd ed. 1812). R. Ackermann described this French style as 'exquisitely perfected by M. Persee, the French architect to Buonaparte' when he published a desk design from the Receuil in his Repository of Arts, 1822. In 1812 Ackermann had included a French fashioned design for a related 'dwarf book and folio case, suitable to a library, and ornamented with 'Persic pillars'. (P. Agius, Ackermann's Regency Furniture and Interiors, London, 1984, pl. 45).
The present cabinet may have been acquired by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the Bishop's Palace, Exeter, following the alterations carried out at the Palace in the second decade of the 19th century (J. Musson, 'The Palace, Exeter', Country Life, 19 March 1998, pp. 44-7).
The present cabinet may have been acquired by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the Bishop's Palace, Exeter, following the alterations carried out at the Palace in the second decade of the 19th century (J. Musson, 'The Palace, Exeter', Country Life, 19 March 1998, pp. 44-7).