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Lot Essay
The bookcase has a Grecian pediment and its frieze is embellished in the French manner with a Grecian ribbon-guilloche of trefoiled foliage, that corresponds to that 'richly inlaid with holly' on an oak drawing-room table designed in 1816 for Great Tew, Oxford by George Bullock (d. 1818) and sold by the late Major Eustace Robb, Tew Park, Christie's house sale, 27-29 May 1987, lot 33. Bullock introduced this same pattern in brass and various woods on other furniture, and this includes a maple and oak cabinet, whose ebony-inlaid panels feature palm-flowered arabesques in the manner inlaid on this bookcase. The panels of the latter cabinet correspond to Bullock's pattern that is recorded in surviving tracings of the firm's work as being for an oak 'Book Commode' for Mrs Burrow [probably of North Bank, Regent's Park] (C. Wainwright et al, George Bullock: Cabinet-Maker, London, 1988, no. 44). An additional note records this pattern as being published in Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 1816. The trefoiled pattern also appears on an inlaid bed cornice illustrated by Ackermann (P. Agius, Ackermann's Regency Furniture & Interiors, London, 1984, pl. 91). In addition, the bookcase panels relate to Bullock's Drawing Room wall decoration that Ackermann illustrated in 1817, while an inverted version of its pediment features as the plinth for the room's pier-cabinet (Agius, op. cit., pl. 93). The present bookcase was no doubt originally one of a pair fitted in recesses flanking a chimney-piece, and may have been commissioned by Charles Winn, né Williamson (d. 1874) around the time of his marriage in 1819 to Priscilla Strickland.
The cabinet-maker George Bullock (d. 1818) had established a Liverpool manufactory with William Stoakes in 1805 before moving to the 'Grecian Rooms' established in Piccadilly in 1810 by his brother William Bullock. His most celebrated commission was the furnishing of the St. Helena home occupied by Emperor Napoleon, who following his defeat at Waterloo had written to George, Prince Regent, later George IV in search of shelter (see M. Levy, 'Napoleon in Exile', Furniture History, 1998).
The cabinet-maker George Bullock (d. 1818) had established a Liverpool manufactory with William Stoakes in 1805 before moving to the 'Grecian Rooms' established in Piccadilly in 1810 by his brother William Bullock. His most celebrated commission was the furnishing of the St. Helena home occupied by Emperor Napoleon, who following his defeat at Waterloo had written to George, Prince Regent, later George IV in search of shelter (see M. Levy, 'Napoleon in Exile', Furniture History, 1998).