A Regency veneered brown oak and ebony inlaid writing cabinet attributed to George Bullock Circa 1815

the rectangular stepped top fitted with a shallow drawer enclosing a writing surface and compartments for writing implements, flanked by horizontal ebonized baluster-turned columns, the ends mounted with gilt-metal flowerheads, with two paneled doors below, and supported on U-shaped feet, inlaid overall with ebony lines.

The Ramsden Family at either Bulstrode Park, Buckinghamshire or Byram Hall, Yorkshire

Sold, Christie’s, London, The Property of a Lady,  April 14, 1988, lot 80

Christie’s, Review of the Season 1998-1999, 1999, p. 255

This 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’. 

The distinctive use of English brown oak veneers on this cabinet are typical of Bullock’s known work, as is the use of the horizontal baluster-turned columns. A similar cabinet without these columns is illustrated in Frances Collard, Regency Furniture, 1985, p. 115.