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Descripción : CABINETS, REGENCY, CIRCA 1800, attributed to Thomas Tatham, possibly in association with Charles Heathcote Tatham, each top on a frieze mounted on the front with stars and diamond appliques, the square tapering end supports with cast gilt-bronze Egyptian heads and feet, each with a fixed shelf, grained rosewood backboard and the base on ball feet, 84 cm high, 118 cm wide, 33 cm deep (2ft 9 in, 3ft 10 1/2 in, 1ft 1 in) the end of each shelf now with brass rods Provenance: Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry (1730-1803), Ickworth, Suffolk, circa 1800 By descent at Ickworth until 1993 Literature: `Ickworth House', Antique Collector, October 1961, p. 220. These important Regency cabinets form part of the original furnishings of Ickworth, Suffolk, the spectacular neo-Classical mansion designed by the Italian architect Mario Asprucci for Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry in 1795. The Earl Bishop, who was among the most distinguished British patrons of the 18th century, conceived Ickworth as a permanent setting for the fabulous works of art he had amassed during his twenty year stay in Italy, and the house has with some justice been described as '..combining the uses of the National Gallery with those of the British Museum'. In 1796, however, shortly after building had begun, the French took Rome, and with it the Earl Bishop's collection, only a fraction of which was ever recovered. Ickworth remained unfinished at his death in 1803, and was completed after a long interval by the 5th Earl of Bristol in 1830. In their style, the Ickworth cabinets correspond closely to documented furniture by the cabinet-maker Thomas Tatham, who formed a highly successful partnership with George Elward and William Marsh in 1798, and worked for many of the leading patrons of the Regency period. Most notable among these was the Prince Regent, to whom in 1806 he supplied a set of four pollard yew-wood cabinets (see F. Collard, Regency Furniture, 1985, p. 54) which bear identical lozenge shaped mounts. Indeed the same mounts appear on the magnificent library table which the Prince purchased from Tatham in 1811 for the Blue Velvet Room at Carlton House, now in the collection of the Earl of Mount Charles. Thomas Tatham frequently worked in association with his brother, the architect and furniture designer Charles Heathcote Tatham, and it is possible, given the splendidly monumental character of the Ickworth cabinets, that the latter was responsible for their design. Certainly Charles Heathcote Tatham was familiar with the fashionable Egyptian taste, for his Etchings of Ancient Ornamental Architecture (1799-1800), to which both the Earl Bishop and Mario Asprucci subscribed, contains engravings of various Egyptian sculptures from the Vatican Museum. Although no documentation has yet emerged to confirm the Earl Bishop's patronage of Thomas Tatham at Ickworth, Charles Heathcote Tatham was one of several architects commissioned to produce designs for the house. In a letter to Henry Holland, by whom he was employed during the mid-1790's, C.H. Tatham records meeting the Earl Bishop at a dinner party in Rome in November 1794, after which: `To my great surprise he commissioned me to make him a design for a villa to be built in Suffolk, extending nearly 500ft including offices....the house being oval, according to his desire.' The villa in question was clearly Ickworth, for Tatham's design,whichhesketchedinplanformforHolland, bears a striking resemblance to the house as it stands today. By February 1795, however, Tatham's enthusiasm had waned, and he wrote to Holland: `My business with Lord Bristol remains in a doubtful state, indeed I need not say doubtful, for I have ere (?) long made up my mind to enter into no engagement with him. He is too capricious a man to prove a serviceable as well as a creditable employer, and the strange life he leads abroad makes it highly probable that he may not live to return to England, being in a constant state of inebriation.' (V&A HA3890). In June 1795, however, the project was revived, and Tatham anticipated continued involvement at Ickworth following his return to England early the following year: `The Earl of Bristol has again paid me great encomiums for my plan. He at first seemed discontented, but is now in the other extreme. He certainly means to build at Ickworth in Suffolk, and that immediately; and through the means (?) of friends I have been seriously informed that he means to adopt for the most part my plan....He lately sent for me, and asked several pertinent questions, such as when I should return to England, and what route I meant to take' (V&A HA3816). No further reference to the Earl Bishop occurs in the Tatham/Holland correspondence, and in the event a very similar design by Tatham's master, the architect Mario Asprucci, curator of the Villa Borghese, was chosen instead (see Pamela Tudor-Craig, 'The Evolution of Ickworth', Country Life, 17th May, 1973). This was adapted and executed by the Irish architect Francis Sandys, another of the Earl Bishop's Roman circle, but given Tatham's close association with the patron and the master-architect, neither of whom was ever to visit Ickworth again, it would seem likely that he retained some degree of involvement with the building and furnishing of the house.
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