Cabinet Doors
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Cabinet Doors |
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This pair of cabinet doors is of wood, painted and gilded, framing a series of 16 star shaped miniature oil paintings on lead. The doors date from 1869, and were originally one of three pairs forming the front of a tall cabinet housed in Burges’s home at 15 Buckingham Street in London. The original cabinet was broken up in c.1877 and the pairs of doors used to front cupboards set into the walls of the drawing room at Tower House, Burges’s new home from 1878. | |
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The star shaped painted
panels depict flowers and fairies, and are probably by N.H.J.Westlake
(1833-1921). Stars are one of the motifs repeated throughout Burges’s
designs for furniture and interior decoration, and could be found in the
form of tiny mirrors set into stars of gilded lead on the ceiling of
Burges’s bedroom at Tower House. The design for the framework and painted
decorations is thought to derive from the Westminster retable, well known to
Burges and used by him to illustrate an article in G.G.Scott’s Gleanings
from Westminster Abbey of 1863. |
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The other two pairs of doors, painted by Frederick Weekes and still in situ in Tower House, display personifications of The Winds and The Oceans. The original cabinet, photographed by R.P.Pullan, can be seen in Crook, plate 195. |  |
