BY HOLLAND & SONS

The handsome temple-pedimented bookcases reflect the Grecian style made fashionable in the early 19th Century by designers such as Henry Whitaker, author of Designs of Cabinet and Upholstery Furniture in the Most Modern Style, 1825; Five Etchings from the Antique, 1827 and The Practical Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Treasury of Designs, 1847. Whitaker assisted the celebrated London firm of Messrs. Holland & Sons with their furnishing of Queen Victoria's Italianate residence at Osborne, Isle of Wight; and the pilasters of these bookcases, with their foliated and reeded pillars, can be related to the ornament of a suite of Osborne chairs supplied by the firm in 1845 (E. T. Joy, English Furniture 1800-1851, London, 1977, p. 150). The bookcases also bear the brand that Messrs. Holland & Sons adopted in the years 1843 to 1846 - all the metalwork, not just the single stamped lock, may have been manufactured at this period by the Strand ironmongers, F.W. Barron & Son.