CIRCA 1840

Details

AN IRISH EARLY VICTORIAN MAHOGANY BOOKCASE
CIRCA 1840
Richly carved overall with scrolling foliage, the central door with fruiting basket finials and quatrefoil astragal panels below arches enclosing three adjustable shelves, flanked by conforming doors each enclosing three adjustable shelves between cluster columns, on a base with lozenge quatrefoil-carved frieze above a pair of quatrefoil doors enclosing a shelf flanked by a conforming door each enclosing a shelf, on a plinth base, the glazed doors and cluster columns with double hinges, the hinges replaced, restoration and replacements to glazing bars
47¼ in. (247 cm.) high; 79 in. (201 cm.) wide; 16 in. (40.5 cm.) deep

Provenance

William Howard, 4th Earl of Wicklow (d. 1869), Shelton Abbey, Co. Wicklow.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

The bookcase's romantic British architecture, with pinnacled and triumphal-arched façade, evokes ancient chivalry and the age of Queen Elizabeth I. While reflecting the 'Gothic' architecture of B. and T. Langley's, Ancient Architecture Restored, 1741; it replicates a 1761 'Gothic Bookcase' pattern in Thomas Chippendale's, Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 3rd ed., 1762, pl. 100.
The bookcase may have been commissioned around 1840 by William Howard, 4th Earl of Wicklow (d. 1869), at the time of his addition of the 'Nunnery' wing to the crenellated mansion of Shelton Abby, co. Wicklow, which had been designed by the architect Sir Richard Morrison some twenty years previously.

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