Lot Essay
The crenellated wardrobe, enriched with linen-fold panelling, was designed by the architect A.W.N. Pugin (d.1852), in the romantic medieval style that he had illustrated in his Gothic Furniture of the 15th Century, 1835 and his Details of Ancient Timber Houses of the 15th and 16th Centuries, 1837 and introduced at Charles Barry's New Palace of Westminster in the mid-1840s. A sketch for a wardrobe of this pattern features in the 1852 Estimate Sketch Book, of Gillows of London and Lancaster, who had gained the 1844 contract for providing bedroom furnishings (Westminster City Library archives, 1852, no. 3828). Its foliate and fretted fittings of tinned-iron were supplied by Messrs. Hardman and Iliffe of Birmingham. The wardrobe bears an incised badge with the client's initials 'F' in place of the 'VR' badge seen on the New Palace wardrobe, one of which is illustrated in R. Cooke, Palace of Westminster, 1987, p. 324. One of Gillows' wardrobes of similar style is illustrated in J. Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, London, 1987, p. 77, fig. 76.
A two-door clothes-press from the New Palace of Westminster, was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 11 April 1991, lot 153.
A two-door clothes-press from the New Palace of Westminster, was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 11 April 1991, lot 153.