An Important Regency Brass-Inlaid and Ormolu-Mounted Rosewood and Mona Marble Side Cabinet Attributed to George Bullock Circa 1815

By repute, The Dukes of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire

The Collection of David Stiles, Christie’s house sale, Wateringbury Place, Maidstone, Kent, June 1, 2, 1978, lot 527

Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, London, November 19, 1993

This important cabinet can be firmly attributed to the workshop of George Bullock (b.1777-1778 – d.1818). Bullock had a varied career, having various partners and cabinet works both in Liverpool and London until his death; although, it is clear that he was originally trained as a sculptor and modeler. It was noted in August 1798 that although he had ‘gained such repute in Birmingham’ he was ‘returning to London, the statue business not answering his expectations’. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804, and is then recorded in Liverpool in 1804 as a ‘Modeller and Sculptor’. In the same year he formed a partnership with William Stoakes, a ‘Looking Glass Manufacturer’, as ‘Bullock and Stoakes  Cabinet Makers, General Furnishers and Marble Workers, 48 Church Street’. Their premises were called the ‘Grecian Room’, but by 1807 the partnership was over, Bullock moving his ‘Grecian Room’ to 23 Bold Street. In 1809-1810 he joined Soane’s assistant J. M. Gandy in a partnership styled ‘Bullock, George and Joseph Gandy, architects, modelers, sculptors, marble masons, cabinet makers and upholsterers’ at 55 Church Street. Again the partnership did not prosper and by late 1810 Bullock was living in London, opening in 1813 at the Grecian Rooms, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly as George Bullock, upholsterers. In 1815 he was established as ‘Sculptor, 4 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, Mona Marble and Furniture Works, Oxford Street’.                  

As Beard and Gilbert remark, (See: Dictionary of English Cabinet Makers 1660-1840, p. 127), ‘Bullock’s furniture was far more assertive in its character than was usual in his day, and the ornaments both in the form of its finely modeled metal mounts and the Boulle and marquetry of various woods and metals is highly stylized and dramatic’.  These features can be clearly seen in the present cabinet which is closely related to another cabinet attributed to Bullock, (see: World Furniture, fig. 768) which has a similar mirrored back to the central recess. It also has the same laurel-leaf-cast mount to the recessed marble top, although the supporting columns are profusely inlaid and mounted with gilt-brass collars, unlike the decorative scagliola columns on the present cabinet. The panels of the doors are similarly inlaid in brass with foliate, anthemion and flowerheads which also relate to a number of others found on cabinets attributed to Bullock. A number of designs for these are preserved in a volume now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery which is entitled ‘Tracings by Thomas Wilkinson from the designs of the late Mr. George Bullock 1820’. Other cabinets are recorded with brass inlays of this singular design, including a smaller example in larchwood, which again has a laurel-leaf-cast mount to the marble top, the design for which is included in the Wilkinson Tracings (C. Wainwright, George Bullock, p. 70, fig. 26).

During his career Bullock had a number of illustrious clients including James Watt of Aston Hall, Matthew Boulton at Great Tew, The Duke of Atholl at Blair Castle and the Earl of Mansfield at Scone Castle, Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, also supplying the furnishings for Napoleons’s final residence on the Island of St. Helena of Elba. Although the present cabinet is purported to have been commissioned by the Duke of Marlborough for Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, this provenance must remain tentative until further records emerge.

The surviving furniture from some of these commissions shows that although much of his furniture was designed in the neo-classical style, some was also Gothic, Elizabethan or Jacobean. Although the previously mentioned title of the Wilkinson Tracings declares that they were designed by Bullock, it is clear that some of them are by the architect Richard Bridgens. It is also interesting to note the use of indigenous woods in Bullock’s work, including larch, oak and elm of various figures, and his ownership of the Mona Marble mine in Anglesey, probably partly due to the commercial constraints of the Napoleonic war.

See:

The Connoisseur, 1965, CLVIII, pp. 249-252, 1965, CLIX, pp. 13-17, ‘The Work of George Bullock cabinet maker in Scotland’, A. Coleridge

F. Lewis Hinckley, A Directory of Antique Furniture, 1953, p. 217, fig. 671  

Helena Hayward, editor, World Furniture, 1965, p. 206, fig. 768

Clive Wainwright, George Bullock Cabinet-Maker, 1988

House and Garden, March 1989, ‘Master of Cabinetry’, pp. 146-149, p. 206