Lot Essay
This mirror-bordered pier-glass with gadrooned inner border framed by flower-festooned acanthus-scrolls derives from 'Glass Frame' patterns in the French 'picturesque' style, such as Thomas Chippendale illustrated in his Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, 1763, pl. CLXXXVIIa. However, its sacred-urn finial above a sunflower medallion relates more closely to the type of frames designed by John Linnell (d. 1796), cabinet-maker and upholsterer of Berkeley Square, in the mid-1770s (see: H. Hayward, 'The Drawings of John Linnell in the Victoria & Albert Museum', Furniture History Journal, Leeds, 1969, fig. 105
The achievement of the Berkeley Square firm of cabinet-makers and upholsterers established in 1754 by William Linnell (d. 1763) and continued by his son John (d. 1796) has been recognised in recent years largely as a result of research by Helena Hayward. Her publication of many drawings from the firm's archive of well over a hundred thousand designs, now held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, in The Journal of the Furniture History Society, vol. 5, 1969, and her book William and John Linnell, 1980, has enabled the firm once again to be viewed on an equal footing with contemporaries, who advertised themselves through the publication of furniture pattern books. The most famous of these is Thomas Chippendale with his Gentleman and Cabinet-Makers Directors, 1754-62. The Linnells are now justly celebrated for their work at houses such as Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire and Osterley Park, Middlesex, where they worked in collaboration with the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792). The Amherst commission was first noted amongst the six hundred clients listed, p. 15 and fig. 113, and concerned a pattern in 1776 for three-foot high giltwood wall lights, Furniture History, op. cit., designed in the antique manner and carved in the form of a sacren-urn enriched with acanthus foliage and festive husk-festooned ram-heads
The achievement of the Berkeley Square firm of cabinet-makers and upholsterers established in 1754 by William Linnell (d. 1763) and continued by his son John (d. 1796) has been recognised in recent years largely as a result of research by Helena Hayward. Her publication of many drawings from the firm's archive of well over a hundred thousand designs, now held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, in The Journal of the Furniture History Society, vol. 5, 1969, and her book William and John Linnell, 1980, has enabled the firm once again to be viewed on an equal footing with contemporaries, who advertised themselves through the publication of furniture pattern books. The most famous of these is Thomas Chippendale with his Gentleman and Cabinet-Makers Directors, 1754-62. The Linnells are now justly celebrated for their work at houses such as Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire and Osterley Park, Middlesex, where they worked in collaboration with the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792). The Amherst commission was first noted amongst the six hundred clients listed, p. 15 and fig. 113, and concerned a pattern in 1776 for three-foot high giltwood wall lights, Furniture History, op. cit., designed in the antique manner and carved in the form of a sacren-urn enriched with acanthus foliage and festive husk-festooned ram-heads
