MID-19TH CENTURY, IN THE RENAISSANCE STYLE

The library table, with reeded and acanthus flowered pillars and its embossed cartouches guarded by poetic winged and serpent-tailed chimerae, is richly carved in a picturesque Elizabethan/mediaeval fashion. It reflects the romantic style introduced to Wales in the 1840s by antiquarians such as Colonel Robert Myddelton Biddulph in his Renaissance ’aggrandisement of the Castle rooms-of-entertainment at Chirk under the direction of the Palace of Westminster architect A.W.N. Pugin and court decorator and furnisher J.G. Crace (see Christie'’s sale at Chirk Castle 21 June 2004, Lots 156-158). Related patterns featured in Henry Whitaker'’s, The Practical Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Treasury of Designs, 1847.