CIRCA 1820-1825, ATTRIBUTED TO JAMES AND MATHEW MORISON OF EDINBURGH AND AYR, AFTER A DESIGN BY GEORGE BULLOCK

The chiffonier bookcase of fine Grecian black-figured rosewood, with stepped-plinth cornice and brass-trellised tablets, is designed in the early 19th century French Grecian fashion promoted by the London and Liverpool cabinet-maker George Bullock (d.1813). The latter's stamp appears on a related cabinet, which is likely to have originally formed one of a pair flanking a drawing-room fireplace (C. Wainwright et al, George Bullock; Cabinet-Maker, London, 1988, fig.24). Its golden basket-weave trellis relates to that of a Grecian bookcase illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's Cabinet Encyclopaedia, 1804-6 ( pl.30); and to that adopted in 1811 by Gillows for bookcases at Tatton Park, Cheshire (see N. Goodison and J. Hardy, Gillows at Tatton Park, Furniture History, 1970, pl.7a).