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Lot Essay
The cabinet, with its frieze enriched with a veil-draped vestal, has its pilasters capped by voluted trusses in the Roman Doric fashion as popularized by Batty Langley's The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, 1740. The truss, wrapped by Roman acanthus, also featured on Roman-fashioned pier-glasses designed by the celebrated Dublin family of mirror-makers, the Bookers. Similar acanthus-wrapped volutes and a veil-draped vestal appear on a giltwood pier glass attributed to Francis and John Booker, circa 1770, formerly at Rath House, Co. Leix (The Knight of Glin and James Peill, Irish Furniture, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 262, cat. 227). Booker.
This cabinet pattern was known in the 18th century as 'A Lady's closet', and relates to examples in Scotland such as that supplied in 1722 for Penicuik House by George Riddell, and that supplied in 1753 for Dumfries House by Francis Brodie (see S. Pryke, 'The Extraordinary Billhead of Francis Brodie', Regional Furniture Society Journal, 1990, pp. 81-99, figs. 8 and 10).
This cabinet pattern was known in the 18th century as 'A Lady's closet', and relates to examples in Scotland such as that supplied in 1722 for Penicuik House by George Riddell, and that supplied in 1753 for Dumfries House by Francis Brodie (see S. Pryke, 'The Extraordinary Billhead of Francis Brodie', Regional Furniture Society Journal, 1990, pp. 81-99, figs. 8 and 10).