Dining room urn and pedestal
Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792)
Category
Furniture
Date
1780 (designed)
Materials
Paint, mahogany, softwood, deal, oak, brass
Measurements
165 x 49 x 49 cm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 871341.2.1
Summary
A painted dining room urn on pedestal, one of a pair, English, circa 1780, designed by Robert Adam (1728 - 1792) and part of a set of dining room furniture also comprising a side table [NT 871341.3] and wall mirror [NT 871341.4] and a fixed serving or side table [NT 871341.1]. This urn and pedestal fitted out differently to its pair; .2.2 with a pedestal cupboard fitted as a warming cupboard and lined with lead and with a brass slatted shelf. Once with brazier. The urn topped by a cover fitted with a pineapple finial and with a gadrooned edge. The neck of the urn with a fluted collar. The body topped by a frieze of anthemion flowers within a scroll above an oval painted en grisaille with a Classical female with a fruiting vine. A further slender band of reeding below. The lower third of the vase with broad but tapering flutes carved with bellflowers. All on a waisted socle with moulded foot. The pedestal with upper moulding above a frieze carved with arches. The arches carved to their centres with alternating anthemion or palmette. All four corners of the frieze mounted with a ram's head; the horns supporting garlands of husks which continue down all four sides of the pedestal. All four garlands issuing riband-topped rosette medallions beneath a moulded tablet with an animal skull below. One of the sides hinged as a door. On a moulded plinth base. This pedestal oak-lined and once fitted with various shelves. The door with a brass push-button mechanism.
Full description
The library at Saltram (designed by Adam in 1768 - 70) was converted into a new dining room in 1780 - 81 through the replacement of the bookcases with new Zucchi paintings, the addition of a fixed sideboard or serving table [NT 871341.1] in the bowed end, and the filling-in of the windows for niches, the whole painted in green and grey. There is some dispute as to the extent of Adam's work in this conversion although drawings survive from his office sketching a mirror [SM Adam volume 20/237] [NT 871341.4] and the painted vases on pedestals [SM Adam Volume 25/158 & 159] [NT 871341.2.1 and .2.2] which now flank the fixed sideboard. One of the latter drawings is dated 23rd November 1780. No drawing of either the sideboard or the side table [NT 871341.3] survive. Some believe that the furniture was made by Henry Stockman, a man variously described as Saltram's estate carpenter and estate gardener. In 1756, Henry Stockman of Plympton St Mary, joiner, agreed a lease with John Parker of Boringdon, esquire, for a dwelling house and a herb garden at Colebrook. The Parker family refer to Stockman in correspondence and he is known to have built a kitchen at Saltram at the turn of the 19th century in collaboration with Thomas Parlby (d. 1802).
Provenance
Designed by Robert Adam (1728 - 1792) in 1780 and commissioned by John Parker (1734 - 1788), 1st Baron Boringdon. Thence by descent. At Saltram by 1951 and accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of full payment of Estate Duty from the Executors of Edmund Robert Parker (1877-1951), 4th Earl of Morley and transferred on loan to NT Saltram in 1957 and transferred as an outright gift to NT in 1984 under s.9 of the Heritage Act 1980 to be maintained and preserved for display to the public at Saltram House with which they have a significant association.
Makers and roles
Robert Adam (Kirkcaldy 1728 - London 1792), designer
References
Macquoid, P. and Edwards, R., The Dictionary of English Furniture (Softback Edition, 1986), 3 vols., Volume Three, p. 139, Figure 5