拍品专文
The bookcase, with elegant Apollonian pedestals, epitomises the robust French/antique fashion introduced around 1810. Its bookshelf-bearing pedestals have 'commode' doors enriched with brass mosaiced trellis; while their pilasters bear sunflowered tablets and paws of 'griffin' lions. These recall the sun god Apollo, whose triumphal role as Parnassan poetry deity is likewise evoked by the palm-flowered Grecian acroteria. The latter accompany plinths that are intended for busts, such as those of Milton and Newton personifying the Arts and Sciences, as featured in an engraving issued in 1811 for a related 'fashionable dwarf library bookcase, made of mahogany ... ornamented with brass' (see R.Ackermann, The Repository of Arts). This 'Grecian Furniture' style was promoted by the Liverpool cabinet-maker George Bullock (d.1818), following the establishment of his London rooms around 1813. Ackermann illustrated a Bullock seat, supported by urn-capped pedestals, in the 1816 Repository, and praised the 'tasteful simplicity' of his work.
Similarly flowered and paw-footed pilasters feature on bookcases designed around 1813 for Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, by the Mayfair cabinet-maker George Oakley (d.1840), following the establishment of his 'Manufactory and Magazine for fashionable Furniture on Bond Street (sold Christie's, London, 8 June 2006, lot 25).
Similarly flowered and paw-footed pilasters feature on bookcases designed around 1813 for Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, by the Mayfair cabinet-maker George Oakley (d.1840), following the establishment of his 'Manufactory and Magazine for fashionable Furniture on Bond Street (sold Christie's, London, 8 June 2006, lot 25).