Bookcase

A breakfront glazed bookcase of carved mahogany with a broken triangular pediment top. Corinthian columns, engaged and detached on the front. Floral garlands above the doors, with carved wreaths on chest and carved lion masks at corners. Greek key pattern frieze. The wording of William Vile's bill for the bookcase traditionally identified with this piece - 'a very handsome Mohogany Bookcase . . . the whole very handsomely Carv'd . . . £107 4s' - implies that it was made for Queen Charlotte (rather than the King) at Buckingham House. First, there is a reference to the fact that the carving on the bookcase was to match another piece of the Queen's furniture, in her 'Buro Closet' at St James's - perhaps the unidentified 'Exceeding neat Mahogany Glass Case . . . Carved Exceeding Rich and neat & Exquisite fine Wood', charged at £100. Second, the bill mentions that the bookcase was constructed so as to conceal a door into an adjacent water closet - a configuration that only fits Queen Charlotte's Bedroom, which lay in the north-west corner of the first floor of Buckingham House overlooking the garden. That there is now no sign of such a door is probably due to an alteration executed five years later at a cost of £31 by John Bradburn, Vile's successor, at which point 'the Whole Front' was 'made into one Press'. This work was carried out to coincide with the creation of a new bedroom for the Queen, overlooking the east front of Buckingham House, and the addition of a new wing which included a library for the Queen. The bookcase was probably the one recorded in the Queen's Blue Closet in the 1825 inventory of Buckingham House among the considerable quantity of old-fashioned furniture considered not worth keeping. The strong architectural character of the bookcase - suggestive of the influence of Sir William Chambers and on the face of it perhaps more likely to appeal to the King's taste than the Queen's - is considerably tempered by the lavish carved decoration, which includes vividly and minutely rendered flower-swags and drops, oval laurel wreaths and rococo scrollwork and clasps. These embellishments may have been carried out by the specialist carver Sefferin Alken (active 1744-83), who is known to have worked for Vile (and Chambers) on other occasions.