CIRCA 1730 - 40, THE CABINET-MAKERS POSSIBLY THOMAS BECROFT AND THOMAS NEWTON

This remarkable bookcase is a rare example of a large-scale architecturally-designed cabinet made in walnut, retaining the thick glazing-bars characteristic of earlier bookcases while also reflecting the designs of Batty Langley in his City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs, 1740. It conforms in many respects to the best London-made walnut furniture of the period, employing fine veneers of burr walnut on an oak carcase and with wide crossbanded panels and deep cross-grained mouldings. Its strongly architectural form relates to a corner cupboard illustrated in Adam Bowett, Early Georgian Furniture 1715 - 40, Woodbridge, 2009, p.129, pl. 3.67. This he likens to the pulpits and altarpieces of London’s `Queen Anne’ churches of 1715 – 30. The bookcase offered here bears a pencil inscription (on the oak carcase between the left and centre bookcases) Thomas Becroft & Thomas Newton, presumably the cabinet-makers or joiners, though neither is previously recorded, yet it’s clear they must have been accomplished craftsmen.

The bookcase was sold in 1921 by Lt-Col. William Selby Lowndes of Whaddon Hall, Bucks. His Lowndes ancestors included William Lowndes (d.1724) who served as Secretary to the Treasury under William III and Queen Anne, and built Winslow Hall, 1699 – 1702, the design attributed to Sir Christopher Wren (Lowndes and Wren were well known to each other). On William’s death the hall passed to his son Robert who survived just three more years, an inventory of the hall taken on his death revealed nothing matching the present lot, and so the hall passed to Richard Lowndes. In 1730 he married Essex Shales, daughter of a London banking family, at St Paul’s Cathedral, and served as MP for Bucks from 1741 until his death in 1775 (without ever contesting an election). It seems likely that the bookcase would have been commissioned at this time. Winslow Hall passed to Richard’s son William on 1766. The Lowndes family inherited nearby Whaddon Hall after the death of Thomas James Selby in 1772, on condition that William Lowndes took the name Selby, and they eventually took possession in 1782 after a protracted legal process. Whaddon Hall had been substantially rebuilt after the antiquarian Browne Willis (d.1760) acquired the house in 1704 and it’s feasible that the bookcase was commissioned by Willis. However William Lowndes’s son, now William Selby Lowndes, eventually rebuilt Whaddon around 1820, apparently purchasing some furniture for the new house, including a pair of magnificent gilt-gesso side tables from Stowe House, and he and his direct descendants lived at Whaddon. Winslow Hall remained in the family though from the late 1840s it was leased for a variety of purposes and eventually sold in 1897. When the bookcase was eventually sold on the death of Lt-Col. William Selby Lowndes it was acquired by the London dealers Moss Harris acting for the 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (d,1925). Curzon served as Viceroy of India (1899 – 1905) and Foreign Secretary (1919 – 24) and, having inherited Kedleston in 1916, had set about recreating `authentic’ rooms for the houses he owned or leased; Kedleston; Tattershall Castle, Lincs; 1 Carlton House Terrace, London; Hackwood Park, Hants; and Montacute, Somerset. He was assisted by the influential connoisseur and furniture historian Percy Macquoid who advised, designed and sourced furniture from the likes of White, Allom & Co, and Morant & Co. The influential London dealers Moss Harris (who were instrumental in the formation of Lord Leverhulme’s collection at the same time) were evidently also part of this circle.