A Regency Gilt-Metal-Mounted Laburnum Double-Sided Open Bookcase, Early 19th Century, Mounted with Six Italian Pietre Dure Panels, Florentine, 17th century

Christopher Gibbs, London;

Private Collection, Ashdown House, Oxfordshire;

Sotheby's London, 27 October 2010, lot 94;

Private Collection;

Christie's London, 19 September 2019, lot 287;

Where acquired by Aso O. Tavitian.

Collecting and decorating taste evolved dramatically under George IV, both during his earlier life as Prince of Wales (until 1811) then Prince Regent (1811-1820) and later during his reign as King (1820-1830). Amidst the panoply of Ancient Greek, Chinese and Gothic influences that came to characterise the lavish and eclectic complexity of the ‘Regency style’, one of the popular currents of taste was a revivalist approach to the historical styles of Europe. One instance of this is George IV’s enthusiasm for the ornate brass, pewter and tortoiseshell ‘Boulle’ marquetry popular under Louis XIV, which had already seen a modest revival in the late eighteenth century and became far more widespread as a result of his eager patronage. Similarly, the taste for pietre dure became far more popular: scenes of birds, flowers and objects rendered in small pieces of varicoloured hardstones were typical of the Grand Ducal Workshops in Florence and had flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A demonstration of this antiquarian taste during the Regency can be seen on a set of cabinets by Robert Hume made around 1820 for Windsor Castle, where they remain to this day – these spectacular pieces incorporate numerous pietre dure plaques to recall the vibrant luxury of Italy, and also some panels of Boulle marquetry to conjure up the splendour of Louis XIV’s court at Versailles (RCIN 31306 and RCIN 31307). Pietre dure pieces from bygone eras also featured in the collection of the influential novelist and tastemaker William Beckford (see D. E. Ostergard (ed), William Beckford, 1760–1844: An Eye for the Magnificent, London 2001, p.358, cat. 83 for an example of a pietre dure casket from c. 1720 in his collection). This bookcase also exhibits the antiquarian predilection of Regency collectors through the adaptation of a much older Italian table-top: the inlay of the top is typical of the grand and often sizeable marble tabletops created in the Baroque taste during the seventeenth century in Italy, and here two corners of a larger table top have been carefully selected for their symmetry and their correct proportions suitable for a smaller piece of case furniture. 

This bookcase was previously part of the furnishings at the storied Oxfordshire castle called Ashdown House. This Dutch-influenced residence was constructed in the 1660s at the behest of William, 1^st Earl of Craven, who intended it to be a site of refuge from plague-ridden London for the elder sister of Charles I, the ‘White Queen’. Married to Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613, she served as Queen of Bohemia only to be deposed in 1619 and then widowed in 1632. Though she returned to England after the Restoration, she never made it to Ashdown House, since she died shortly afterwards in 1662. Ashdown House passed through the family of the Barons Craven for centuries and remained essentially unchanged, but would later incur heavy damage while being used by the army during the Second World War, and was donated to the National Trust in 1956.