A Regency Mahogany Hall Bench After a Design by George Bullock, Circa 1810

Apter-Fredericks, London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 15 October 2004.

This model’s combination of tulip-form uprights, cylindrical armrests and unique half-paterae-and-ball border means that we can identify it with a group of documented furniture by the important Regency furniture-maker George Bullock. One pair of stools was sold by Bullock for £23.2s to Matthew Robinson Boulton in 1817, remaining at his residence Tew Park in Oxfordshire until their appearance in the House sale at Christie’s, 27 June 1987, lot 31. The rails of that pair are obscured by the upholstery but they likely do not have the half-paterae-and-ball border; however, this distinctive feature is clearly visible on the stools provided for the Portuguese Ambassador to England from 1812-1815, Don Pedro de Souza e Holstein, 1^st Duke of Palmella. The stools from this suite, of which one example is illustrated in A. Gonzáles-Palacios, Antologia di Belle Arti: Il Neoclassicismo, Turin 1990, p.70, fig.4, features even richer decoration in the form of brass inlay to the rails and brass mounts to the round terminals of the handles. Clive Wainwright has suggested that the design for this stool may ultimately derive from a drawing in The Rudiments of Drawing Cabinet Furniture, published in 1819 by Richard Brown and generally based on George Bullock’s work (see C. Wainwright, ‘George Bullock and his Circle’, in idem., George Bullock Cabinet-Maker, London 1988, p.16). Numerous examples of this model, typically with some variations to the design, have appeared on the auction market, including Christie’s London, 23 May 2018, lot 110 and Sotheby’s London, 2015, 5 December 2015, lot 272.