EARLY 18TH CENTURY, WITH LATER FRIEZE AFTER A DESIGN BY JAMES GIBBS (1682-1754)

Related to designs by the pre-eminent architect-designer, James Gibbs, in particular a comparable chimneypiece with a laurel carved frieze and shaped mantel is illustrated in James Gibbs' 1739 work A Book of Architecture, Containing Designs of Buildings and Ornaments, 2nd edition, 1739, pl. 97. Other related Gibbs chimneypieces include a design for Hampstead Marshall, Berkshire, 1739, a chimneypiece in the Fellows' Building, Kings College, Cambridge, 1724-31, and another in the Parlour of 11 Henrietta Street, London, re-erected in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Terry Friedman, James Gibbs, New Haven and London, 1984, p. 15, fig. 165, p. 237, fig. 262; Victoria & Albert Museum, museum no. W.5-1960). Gibbs' style was a successful synthesis of ideas from Italian sources both Baroque and Palladian, and English sources. Designs of this piece and others were later plagiarised and popularised through William Halfpennys later architectural manuals.