H. Blairman & Sons Ltd

Designed and manufactured by George Bullock (d. 1818)

Rosewood and ebony, with brass inlay and gilt-lacquered bronze mounts; the porphyry top of later date

36 ¼ in (93 cm) × 43 in (110 cm) × 26 ½ in (67 cm)

English (London), circa 1815

[ … ]; English private collection, since 1960s; H. Blairman & Sons, 2006; private collection, 2006-2023

Martin Levy, ‘George Bullock’s Partnership with Charles Fraser 1813–1818, and the Stock-in-Trade Sale, 1819’, Furniture History XXV (1989), Fig. 6

H. Blairman & Sons, Furniture and Works of Art (2006), no. 1

Private collection

Cabinets distinguished by their free-standing metal-mounted ‘Persic pillars’ represent Bullock’s oeuvre at its most majestic. The present example should be compared to the well-known pair of cabinets supplied to the Duke of Atholl, first published by Anthony Coleridge in ‘The Work of George Bullock, Cabinet-maker, in Scotland: 1’, The Connoisseur, April 1965, Figs 4 and 5. A third grand cabinet, also supplied to the Duke of Atholl, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (see Clive Wainwright, et al., George Bullock: Cabinet-Maker, exn cat., London, 1988, under no. 9, Fig. 25). A further pair of related cabinets, supplied to the Duke of Abercorn, is included in George Bullock: Cabinet-Maker, no. 23.

The design for a cabinet of the same general form is preserved in the Wilkinson Tracings (City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham), p. 86.

The present cabinet is identical to one formerly in the collection of the late Queen Mary (sold Christie’s, 1 October 1959, lot 45) and later in the collection of the late Helena Hayward (sold Sotheby’s, London, 4 July 1997, lot 107). The Hayward cabinet retains its original porphyry slab, on which the present top has been based.