CIRCA 1820

The Grecian plinth-supported sideboard is carved with palm-flowered and sarcophagus-scrolled trusses, whose pattern derives from a table designed under the direction of the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1832) and derived from a marble antiquity illustrated in the court architect C. H. Tatham's Etchings of Ancient Ornamental Architecture, 1799 (Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807 pl.12). The same Bacchic lion-pawed trusses feature on banqueting chairs with leopard-skin upholstery bearing the Burnell crest of violets in a lion's paw [On a Wreath of the Colours (Or and Sable) A Lion's Garb erect and erased Sable in the Paw a Bunch of Violets proper]. These chairs are inscribed with the date 1820 and name of Charles Dixwell, who may have been the 'Dixwell' cabinet-maker and subscriber in 1793 to Thomas Sheraton's Drawing Book. (The chair corresponds to another acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1967 and illustrated E. T. Joy, English Furniture 1800-1851, p.58). These latter chairs were commissioned by Peter Pegge (d.1836) after he had assumed the name and arms of Burnell. He served in 1788 as High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, and it is conceivable that this sideboard also originally formed part of his refurbishment of Winkburn Hall, Nottinghamshire.