细节
A mid-Victorian Arts and Crafts oak, ebony, walnut and marquetry bedroom suite, the design attributable to Charles Bevan and probably manufactured by Marsh and Jones of Leeds,with overall stylised foliate, dot and chevron inlay, comprising: a breakfront wardrobe, with crocket finials above central mirrored door, flanked by panelled doors with chamfered uprights centred by a panel carved with intwined foliage and stylised initials J.B. and M.A. and dated A.D. 1877, on bun feet - 78in. (198cm.) wide, 21in. (53cm.) deep, 97in. (246cm.) high, the hinges stamped indistinctly with initials J.C. and numbered, the locks stamped Cope & Collinson, Royal Patent Lever; a half tester bed with castellated cornice, with crocket finials and frieze carved with wheat sheaves, the headboard with half-column uprights, the footboard centred by carved lozenge of scrolling foliage centred by initials J.B.M.A. and dated 1874, complete with side rails, box spring and mattress - 66in. (168cm.) wide, the headboard end - 108in. (274cm.) wide overall; and a dressing table with swing-frame mirror, the locks stamped Fallows & Co...R.M.M - 50in. (127cm.) wide, 21¾in. (55cm.) deep, 55in. (140cm.) high.; a marble topped washstand, with associated top - 48in. (122cm.) wide, 21in. (53cm.) deep, 31in. (79cm.) high; and a set of four side chairs, each with tapering back with chamfered uprights.(8) (8)
来源
John Booth (died 1887) and his wife Mary Ann Booth (died 1873), Howden House, Silsden, West Yorkshire. John Booth (died 1937) and Elizabeth Booth (died 1929). Howden House, built in 1866, passed from the Booth family in the 1940s and the suite was dispersed. This is one of two known bedroom suites made for Howden House in the 1860s and 1870s for the Booth family, who continued to commission such furniture up until the 1890s, partly explaining why the carved inscriptions here refer to John and Mary Ann Booth even after the latter's death. This particular bedroom suite, designed in the Old English Gothic style of the 1870's, displays many hallmarks of the documented work of Charles Bevan of Cavendish Square, notably the extensive use of ebony dot-inlay combined with chamfered uprights, crocket finials, stylized foliage and stumpy half-columns. It most closely relates to the famous bedroom suite and two pianos, designed by Bevan with inlay work by Mr. Vert, a shadowy figure known to have worked for the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick castle in 1865, made by Messrs. John Marsh and Edward Jones of Leeds, whose Cavendish Square workshops opened in 1864, for Titus Salt, creator of Saltaire, now in Lotherton Hall, the piano being illustrated in The Building News of March 1867 (cf. C. Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall, Leeds 1978). The closest similarities are in the distinctively stylized lobed flowerheads, and in the combination of dot and chevron-inlay. However, no direct parallels can be found for the carved foliate decoration of this suite as seen especially in the tester canopy, and most particularly for the strikingly bold scrolling foliage of this tester bed - the headboard of the Salt suite is mostly upholstered. These scrolls do however relate to a design by A.W.N. Pugin for wallpaper, Palace of Westminster 1847, with similar sickle-shaped foliage with lobed dotted flowers, and with a distinctly medieval/Moorish influence, illustrated in The Craces: Royal Decorators 1768-1899 edited by Megan Aldrich, John Murray, 1990 p.139. A cabinet in Bruce Talbert's Gothic Forms, plate 2, also exhibits such exaggerated scrolling foliage, illustrated in Architect- Designers Pugin to Mackintosh, Exhibition Catalogue, Fine Art Society 1981, plate 1. If indeed designed by Bevan, the suite offered here can be seen as a bolder development, drawn from a variety of sources, of his distinctive style as most famously exemplified in the Salt suite.