Lot 307
VICTORIAN MAHOGANY AND BRASS MOUNTED HALL BENCH, BY JAMES SHOOLBRED
LATE 19TH CENTURY
Auction: Five Centuries Day One | Wed 11th November | Lots 1 to 322
Description
with a pierced baluster toprail between reeded uprights, above a solid rectangular seat, on reeded downswept legs joined by stretchers
Dimensions
56cm wide, 63cm high, 31.5cm deep
Footnote
James Shoolbred & Co., based on Tottenham Court Road, London, a prominent centre for fashionable furniture retail from the 1860s, operated one of the capital’s earliest major department stores. Although the firm traded in a wide range of goods, it began manufacturing furniture circa 1870, publishing an important catalogue of its designs in 1876 and receiving a Royal Warrant in the mid-1880s. Its production encompassed a broad spectrum of contemporary styles, including Art Furniture, ‘Old English’ and ‘Japanese’ designs. At the 1878 Paris Universal Exhibition, the firm presented ‘a very extensive selection of items’ (E. Joy (ed.), Pictorial Dictionary of British 19th Century Furniture Design, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1977, p. xxxvi). Much of its output reflected the Aesthetic Movement, popularised by figures such as Oscar Wilde and the architect E. W. Godwin.