A George II mahogany bookcase, circa 1740-1750

Probably Sir Nicholas Bayly, 2nd Bart. (1709–1782) and at Beaudesert, Staffordshire before 1921.

Phillips, Son & Neale, London, Beau Desert, An Inventory, Furniture and Miscellaneous Articles […] for removal to Plas Newydd, 2^nd-5^th May 1921, p.12, in the Writing Room, ‘A fine old English bookcase in mahogany with carved dentil cornice and mouldings, the upper part with shelves enclosed by two doors with six plate glass panels, the lower part enclosed by two panel doors’ (Bangor University Archives and Special Collections, PN/VIII/5862);

Ralph Edwards, ‘Notable Private Collections – XXV, English Furniture at Plas Neywdd, Anglesey, Home of the Marquess of Anglesey', The Connoisseur, July- December 1955, illustrated, p. 243, pl. 8.

This bookcase is a characteristic example of the case furniture created in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, when the Palladian style practised by William Kent and advocated by the 3^rd Earl of Burlington was at its apex. This classicising taste saw the introduction of numerous architectural motifs from Antiquity into English furniture, including several that can be observed on the present lot: the Greek key on the frieze above the doors, the floral variation on the bead-and-reel motif just beneath it, the egg-and-dart borders throughout and the dentils to the upper cornice are all originally from classical architecture. In his City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs (1741), the designer Batty Langley further systematised this link between architecture and furniture by creating furniture designs that conformed to the classical orders as formalised in the Renaissance – his “Ionick [sic] Book Case” features dentils and six windows, much like the present lot.¹ Usually, Kentian bookcases would include a pediment or a broken pediment, allowing the bookcase to be “surmounted by a bust or a series of busts, generally of classical worthies”.² The furniture-makers William Vile and John Cobb are associated with the later examples of this style,³ but the more active maker in the 1740s was William Hallett, to whom Vile was apprenticed until at least 1749. A bookcase attributed to Hallett sold at Sotheby’s, 8^th March 2016, lot 104, while a circa 1750 bookcase attributed to Hallett or Vile and Cobb sold at Christie’s London, 19^th January 2021, lot 25. The only known piece to be signed by Hallett, a cabinet on chest, sold at Christie’s New York, 14^th October 2009, lot 54. An important bookcase in the Kentian manner from Stanwick Park sold at Sotheby’s London, 9^th July 2014, lot 8. There are a pair of mahogany library bookcases, worthy of comparison, which share similar carved detail. These were part of a set of four supplied to Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby Hall in Yorkshire, circa 1750, sold Christie's New York, 25^th April 2008, lot 100. Interestingly Rokeby was not far from Stanwick Park.

¹ ‘B. L. Surveyor’ [Batty Langley], The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Design: Or the Art of Drawing and Working the Ornamental Parts of Architecture, London, 1741, p.347, pl. CLXI. Available at: <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ncs1.ark:/13960/t1dj61f8p&seq=347&view=1up> [accessed 27^th February 2024]

² Percy Macquoid and Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, rev. ed., London, 1954, p.84.

³ See Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert (ed.), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, Leeds, 1986, p.388: “certain items of furniture […] which can be dated to c. 1750 are more likely to be by William Hallett snr than his journeyman William Vile, and that Vile continued the ‘style’ in later years.”