拍品專文
This glazed and drawer-fitted bookcase, perhaps intended for a bureau/commode, has its reeded door astragals mosaic-fretted with poetic sun-rayed oval medallions; while its drawers reflect the Etruscan fashion promoted in the 1770s by architects, such as Robert Adam (d.1792). Within reed-scrolled and ebony borders, they display golden bas-relief paterae/libation-plates enriched with Venus pearls. The plain ringed handle substitutes the poetic laurel wreath featured on this pattern of double-pearled plate illustrated as no. 1837 in a late l8th century Birmingham brass-founder's catalogue (sold Christie's London, 15 April 1999 lot 37).
A related bookcase-door astragal pattern, with lozenged compartment in place of the central oval, was published in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Drawing Book, 1793 (no 7 in pl. XXVII).
A related bookcase-door astragal pattern, with lozenged compartment in place of the central oval, was published in Thomas Sheraton's, Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Drawing Book, 1793 (no 7 in pl. XXVII).