A GEORGE III MAHOGANY SERPENTINE DRESSING-CHEST

Certain constructional features of this dressing-chest – a thin red wash to some of the secondary timbers, the use of short-grain drawer kickers, as well as the presence of packing thread and redundant nails to the underside – are features associated with Thomas Chippendale's St. Martin's Lane workshop (see Rufus Bird, the preface to the Dumfries House: A Chippendale Commission Christie's sale catalogue, 2007, vol. II, pp. 7-11). The choice of finely-figured mahogany veneers to the cockbeaded drawers combined with the straight-sided design beneath a serpentine top recall the pair of chests of drawers supplied by Chippendale to Ninian Home in 1774 for Paxton House, Berwickshire (C. Gilbert, The Life & Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol. I, p. 271; vol. II, fig. 206), whilst the ogee bracket feet recall a clothes-press of 1767 and a tallboy or 'double chest' of c. 1770-75, both made for Nostell Priory (ibid., p. 118, fig. 207 and p. 135, fig. 244).