Fire screen
Category
Furniture
Date
c 1715
Materials
Padouk, pine and fabric
Measurements
142.5 x 63.5 x 30.4 cm
Order this imageCollection
Chastleton House, Oxfordshire
NT 1429989
Summary
A padouk firescreen, Chinese, made for export to Europe, circa 1715. Of cheval type, the screen topped by an arched and shaped cresting of scrolls centred by a carved coat of arms – PAGE impaling TROTMAN – and sliding in two slender columnar supports topped by acorn finials and terminating in blocks issuing two downswept legs, joined by two turned and ring-turned stretchers.
Full description
This screen – with turned columns and high, arched and carved cresting – dates to the same period as many of the high-backed chairs in the house, which mainly date to 1710-20. The arms, previously unidentified, belong to Sir Gregory Page (1669-1720), who was created baronet in 1714, here impaling those of his wife, Mary Trotman (d. 1728) whom he married in 1690. The arms, correctly blazoned are: PAGE, ‘Azure, a fess indented between three martlets Or’ and TROTMAN, ‘Argent, a Cross Gules between four Roses of the second, seeded Or, barbed Vert’. Sir Gregory Page was a brewer and merchant, amassing vast wealth in trade with South and East Asia. He was an MP and from 1713-14 served as director of the East India Company. Gregory Page purchased export lacquer chairs from China bearing his coat of arms, between 1714 and 1720, and items of heraldic porcelain and furniture from China bearing the his arms impaling those of his wife. It is probable, given that, in 2017, Hugh Routh identified this screen as being made of padouk, rather than rosewood, that this too was made in China. If so, it is extremely rare. How the screen came to be at Chastleton is not clear, but Mary Page née Trotman’s family were from Siston in Gloucestershire only 60 miles from Chastleton. It may be the ‘screen covered with red’ in the Great Parlour in 1738. Dr Megan Wheeler, Assistant National Curator (Furniture) – May 2024