A GEORGE IV MAHOGANY SIDEBOARD

Appropriate for the 'massy' display plate of George IV's Regency, the 'Fursden' sideboard-table is embellished in the Grecian manner with robust reeded ornament and its plinth-supported 'altar' pedestal is capped by a stepped cornice and Ionic-scrolled temple pediment. It was commissioned by George Sydenham Fursden (d. 1836) following his aggrandisement of the Banqueting Hall at Fursden House, Devon with the assistance of the architect James Green (d. 1849), Devon's County Surveyor. The architecture of its pillars also relates to that of a Roman candelabrum and table illustrated by Rudolph Ackermann (d. 1834) in The Repository of Arts, 1812. Here Ackermann noted that the candelabrum engraving had been admired 'for its simple elegance, and is expressly designed in conformity to that general taste for uniting plainness with elegance, which prevails amongst the genteel class of the British public'.