A Regency gilt-bronze and stained-glass hall lantern, circa 1815, attributed to George Bullock

A drawing by the prominent cabinetmaker George Bullock that closely resembles the present lantern is kept in the archives of the Birmingham Museums, cat. no. 1974M3.162,¹ as part of the group known as the ‘Wilkinson Tracings’ acquired in 1974. Several other comparable examples of lanterns in this style exist, such as the one supplied for Napoleon’s residence on St Helena;² this St Helena lantern applies neo-Gothic motifs in a highly similar manner to the present lot, and has an almost identical finial to the underside. Another example that also shares the same finial, and also the corona of the present lot, was at Rheinstein Castle in the Rhineland-Palatine, as part of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Gothic Revival decorative scheme from the 1820s.³ A similar lantern is in a London private collection, and another comparable lantern is in the library of Babelsberg Palace, a Potsdam residence of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia that was also furnished by Schinkel in an English-inspired Gothic Revival style.⁴

A possible maker for the lantern is the firm W. & S. Summers, like the closely comparable St Helena lantern, which was catalogued by Martin Levy as “probably manufactured” by this firm.⁵ ‘W. S. Summers’ was listed at 105 New Bond Street in 1818 ‘furnishing ironmongers’, and in a separate account for Shrubland Hall, Suffolk, they were described as “W. and S. Summers / Stove and Lamp Manufacturers”.⁶ When Bullock died in 1818 and a major 574-lot sale of his stock followed at Christie’s, nine lots were purchased by Summers, possibly a purchasing back of metalwork that they originally supplied to Bullock during his lifetime.⁷

¹ ‘1974M3.162 Wilkinson Tracing, Design for a lantern, 1820’, Birmingham Museums Trust. Available at: <https://dams.birminghammuseums.org.uk/asset-bank/action/viewAsset?id=28270&index=90&total=238&view=viewSearchItem> [accessed 19^th March 2024]

² Martin Levy, Napoleon in Exile, Leeds, 1990, p.75.

³ Celina Fox, ed., London – World City 1800–1840, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 1992, no. 319.

⁴ Documented and photographed at Babelsberg by Bruce Lindsay in the 2000s.

⁵ Levy, op. cit., p.75.

⁶ Martin P. Levy, ‘Lamps, Lanterns and Lustres: Lighting Designed by George Bullock’, in Furniture History, 2020, fn. 24, p.188.

⁷ Martin Levy, ‘George Bullock’s Partnership with Charles Fraser, 1813-1818, and the Stock-in-Trade Sale, 1819’, in Furniture History, 2020, p.150, p.154.