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Item Description / Dealer Expertise
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Each bookcase is in two sections and incorporates reclaimed timber. The cornices are decorated with applied and carved, strapwork ornament. The uprights are headed with columns and caryatids above applied, turned and carved ornament with reeding below. The tops are fitted with open shelves. The lower sections are open with the uprights mirroring the reeding above. The sides are panelled on the lower section and boarded above, headed with a return of the cornice. These bookcases came from a large country house and were originally fitted into a recess. The return cornice, and ends and moulding on one side of each bookcase have recently been added so that they can be freestanding. The bun feet have also been replaced. English, last half of the 19th century.
Length : 215cm wide, 7ft., 0.5 in., Height 244cm., 8ft., Depth 55cm., 1ft., 10 in.,
The Italian inspired Baroque ornament, which was highly fashionable when these bookcases were made, gives them gravitas and they are reminiscent of the earliest domestic examples now in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
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