A GEORGE III MAHOGANY AND FRUITWOOD ESTATE CABINET

This handsome cabinet, designed in the George II Roman or Serlian fashion, has a triumphal tabernacle-compartment set in its recessed centre and framed by paired Corinthian pilasters, while its golden arch is inlaid in trompe l'oeil with flutes in the antique fashion popularised in the 1760s. The fluted entablature of its similarly inlaid commode base is accompanied by Grecian-fretted ribbon banding the metopes of its Doric triumphal-arch facade. A related cabinet, with a Grecian-fretted entablature and Ionic-pilastered facade, bears the inscribed date of 1763 beside the signature of the Long Acre cabinet-maker William Hallett (d.1781) ( A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, fig 69; and G. Beard, 'The Quest for William Hallett', Furniture History Society Journal, 1985 pp.220-225, nt. 24)