A GEORGE III WHITE-PAINTED BREAKFRONT BOOKCASE

The white-painted bookcase is likely to have been commissioned for Moccas Court, Herefordshire in the early 1780s by Sir George Cornewall, Bt., M.P. for Hereford. In 1775 after consulting the architect Robert Adam (d. 1792), Sir George employed Anthony Keck (d. 1797) in the building of his elegant villa, which was completed in 1783. The bookcase, designed to echo the chaste ornamental bands of the ceilings and walls, is embellished with pilasters of fretted ribbon-guilloche, while its cornice is enriched with a pearl-band in the Etruscan fashion, together with feathers. The latter, appropriate to the house of a family dedicated to the arts, recalls the Palmyreen Temple of Apollo, sun-deity, god of poetry and leader of the Muses of Artistic inspiration on Mount Parnassus.