Lot Essay
The state apartment of Nostell Priory, Yorkshire is the most famous example of the exotic English style known as "Chinese Chippendale"; and its Chinese-papered rooms retain their colourfully japanned furnishings introduced around 1770 by Thomas Chippendale (d.1787). The St. Martin's Lane cabinet-maker and upholsterer was celebrated as the author of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Directors (1754-1762), and these guides to house-furnishings included a wide variety of patterns for whimsical "China Cases" for bedroom apartments. These stand-supported cases were conceived as "pagoda" temples enriched with rich frets, dragons and bells; and while it was intended that porcelain should be displayed within glazed doors, large vases stood underneath them as well as on top of their cornices. "For use and ornament" was a popular phrase in mid-18th century advertisements; and far from being "nonfunctional", such colourful vases, even empty, were essential to enliven the rooms. They served to deck and flower all available surfaces of a bedroom apartment, including door and chimney entablatures as well as even the hearth-slab or grate, when not in use. Such China-ware furnishing is well documented in the 1749 inventory of Petworth, Sussex, which includes a reference to "Japan china". While the cataloguer may have been skilled in detecting the origins of the porcelain, such lacquered porcelain, as this set of vases, could have been described at the time as "japanned".