The Regency period Egyptian revival mahogany bow fronted chest of drawers, the top with outset front angles, supported on caryatid pilasters with ebonised plaster masks and feet, flanking three graduated and cockbeaded drawers with pressed brass elliptical lion mask and cornucopia handles and escutcheons, to a plinth base and surviving from the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Purchased from Hill House Antiques, Midhurst, UK.
The influences on Regency design and taste were legion; from Sheraton’s neoclassicism, Henry Holland’s Anglo-French taste, the Greek revival of Thomas Hope, and the Chinoiserie favoured by the Prince Regent, to an interest in the Gothic, Old English and rustic and, the Egyptian revival, as we see here. Archaeologists encouraged the exploration of Egypt in the late eighteenth century, but it was not until the 1802 publication of Dominique Denon’s Voyages Dans la Basse et Haute Egypte that a resurgence in popularity of Egyptology became notable. This book depicted Egyptian architecture and was a catalyst for the crazed fashion for Egypt that swept over Regency England.
A very handsome chest of drawers of superior quality and full of panache.
The condition of the chest is overall good to very good. There are the obligatory marks to the top; we have waxed and polished the whole. The drawers all glide smoothly. There are two small sections of loss to the ebonised plaster feet areas of the caryatids. This chest was purchased from Hill House Antiques, Midhurst, West Sussex in August 1971 for £165.00, which amounts to approximately £3,162 in today’s money.
By appointment only.
