EARLY 19TH CENTURY

The Pompeian-pillared and reed-enriched chest of graduated and beautifully figured goncalo alves drawers is conceived in the early nineteenth century French/antique fashion. And, appropriate for a bedroom apartment, its Grecian plinth-supported and urn-capped pillars evoke poetic 'sacrifices at love's altar in antiquity'. The fashion for such 'Double Chest of Drawers' was popularised by George Smith's, Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, London, 1808 (pl. 131); while the pillars can be related to Smith's antique and urn-capped 'candelabra' pattern (ibid. pls. 175 and 139). Its robust architecture relates in particular to the fashion adopted around 1814 for 'Grecian' furniture executed by the celebrated Edinburgh cabinet-maker William Trotter (see F. Bamford, A Dictionary of Edinburgh Furniture Makers, Leeds, 1983, pp. 115-122).