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Lot Essay
This banqueting hall sideboard table is designed in the romantic 'Elizabethan' fashion introduced around 1800 by architects such as James Wyatt (d.1813). Fretted lilies flower its 'china' rail and the libation-paterae incorporated in the triumphal 'wine-cistern' arch; while the herm-tapered legs are paired in French fashion. Its cusped and quatrefoiled arches and cluster-columned legs feature in related oak hall chair patterns in George Smith's Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1808 (pl. 35) and again in his designs for drawing-room Gothic chairs from his later published Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Guide, 1826, the designs for which were possibly conceived earlier.
A related 'Elizabethan' style centre table following a design attributed to William Atkinson and probably made by George Bullock was supplied to the 3rd Earl of Mansfield at Scone Palace circa 1815 (sold by his descendant Christie's, London, 'Scone Palace and Blairquhan: The Selected Contents of Two Great Scottish Houses', 24 May 2007, lot 414 (£9,000). Atkinson's romantic gothic furniture designs for this commission are recorded in 'Scone Sketches Furniture' in Scone Palace, Family Archive.
A related 'Elizabethan' style centre table following a design attributed to William Atkinson and probably made by George Bullock was supplied to the 3rd Earl of Mansfield at Scone Palace circa 1815 (sold by his descendant Christie's, London, 'Scone Palace and Blairquhan: The Selected Contents of Two Great Scottish Houses', 24 May 2007, lot 414 (£9,000). Atkinson's romantic gothic furniture designs for this commission are recorded in 'Scone Sketches Furniture' in Scone Palace, Family Archive.