Wimpole's Gothic Library Steps - circa 1750
Henry Keene (1726 - 1776)
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1750
Materials
Oak, walnut inlay, brass castors, handles and backplates
Measurements
210.5 x 117.5 x 144 cm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
NT 206667
Summary
A set of oak library steps, English, circa 1750, probably designed by Henry Keene (1726 - 1776) for the library at Wimpole. Of pulpit form, the front and sides panelled; the front fitted with a bookrest on acanthus-carved corbel brackets, and with a strapwork lozenge-carved and lambrequin apron. The sides with sloping and moulded top edge and inlaid in walnut with Gothic interlaced strapwork lozenges and lines, and strapwork spandrels. Fitted with a set of steps of six treads, which fold up and down. The front and sides fitted with a brass handle and backplate above the four hexagonal and out-scrolling legs with moulded feet and brass castors. The legs joined by curving stretchers topped by a rectangular platform. The mouldings throughout foliate-carved; the waist moulding carved with flowers and ribands. --
Full description
Identical to a design in the Victoria & Albert Museum [E.919-1921] believed to have been drawn by Henry Keen and inscribed 'Library Steps at Ld. Hardwickes at Wimple. wains'. The 1st Earl of Hardwicke purchased Wimpole from Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford (d. 1741) in 1740 and initiated improvements to the Library there sometime in the late 1740s and 1750s. In 1750 and 1753, Sanderson Miller (a gentleman and Gothic enthusiast who had worked with Keene, and recommended him to clients previously) visited Wimpole and in 1760 a letter written by Reverend William Cole records that Miller had visited him and was at that time 'altering the Library at Wimpole'. A related set of library steps is in the Library at Ham House [NT 1139981]. Also made of oak and with folding steps, they are slightly less sophisticated and were probably made slightly earlier, circa 1740. (Entry adapted by Megan Wheeler in 2017 from Frances Collard, 'A design for library steps by Henry Keene', in Furniture History 26 (1990), 34 - 8).
Provenance
Probably purchased by Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke (1690 - 1764), circa 1740. Visible in the Library in a Country Life photograph of 1927. Thence, part of the Bambridge Collection. The hall and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust in 1976 by Mrs Elsie Bambridge (1896 - 1976)
Makers and roles
Henry Keene (1726 - 1776), designer
References
Collard, 1990: Frances Collard. “A design for library steps by Henry Keene.” Furniture History 26 (1990): pp.34-8.