Irish furniture 1740-1800: the Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald, recalls how his interest in Irish furniture developed when he was working at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and reviews the slow return to fashion—and appreciation in value—of Irish baroque furniture over the past decade or so

single has to be to a certain expansion the prisoner of one's be in possession of environment. Being brought up at the toy-fort-like Glin Castle upon the River Shannon in south-west Ireland, I greatly appreciated its delicate Adamesque interiors on the other hand even then at an early age realised that it had actual little good furniture.

The original furnishings were sold in a sale in 1803 after the death of my ancestor Colonel John FitzGerald, 24th Knight of Glin, when he died almost bankrupt, having followed to many debts and after building the house. Luckily the family portraits were not sold--no-one wanted them in those days. Other than a place of twelve Regency hall chairs painted with the family plumes there was only one piece of importance remaining at Glin. This was the heavily carved baroque side table with its armorial shield that still stands in the main hall (Fig. 2) It is flatly carved with robust leg clearly made from solid pieces of mahogany showing no hint of a bend The tops of the leg are headed by the agency of weird lions' masks making a meal of acanthus leaves and the background is criss-crossed with a diaper pattern. An unusual feature is the raised sloping shelf at the back of the table. The solitary likely explanation is that, as the ledge's angle makes it impossible to plant anything down on it, it was made in this way to shield the portrait behind it from candle flames. The portrait is of John FitzGerald, 19th Knight of Glin, being brought a challenge to a affair of honor and dates from about 1735

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I have above the years, when finances were possible, refurnished Glin with Irish pieces and Irish paintings. I was successful to have been able to wander around the London antique stores after I took up a curatorship at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1965 digs Molesworth was my first bos there in the Furniture and Woodwork Department and after him I worked below the stimulating leadership of Peter Thornton. It was possible to find Irish things in London cheaply then, as small in number knew anything about Irish furniture, and Irish collectors concentrated upon silver and glass.

Returning to our sideboard: in the past year or with equal reason a much larger and smooth more bizarre example (Fig. 4) was privately sold for a six-figure aggregate amount It came from Ballynagarde, in east Limerick, not far away from Glin, and was made for Edward Croker single of the members of the notorious Limerick Hellfire cudgel He is portrayed in a conversation piece of c 1735-40 through James Worsdale, now in the National Gallery of Ireland. This portrait is real important as it shows a certain quantity of of the mahogany Irish furniture of the period and includes a chase table, splat-backed chairs, and a wine cistern carved with masks. At the midst of the front of Croker's enormous sideboard is a carved vase replete of flowers flanked by great seaweedy festoons of fruit, flowers and foliage. Tiny lion masks cry out below shells and the heads upon the legs look like verdant Men tied on by tie This rope feature and the lion paw feet leg and exaggerated acanthus leaves are actual similar to the one at Glin. I believe that they are one as well as the other products of a workshop in Limerick or Cork.

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Desmond Guinness counts me he bought this table at an auction of Henry Naylor's stock in Dublin when Naylor's nephew the late Ronnie MacDonnell, a well-known dealer, took above his business in about 1966 Desmond could not diocese the table properly as a file of bidders were sitting upon it. It was knocked down to him for 3 [pound sterling] 10 shillings and Desmond meditation he was buying a kitchen table, which he and his late wife, Mariga, urgencyed Imagine their surprise when the table make go rounded out to be what it was. The price graphically exhibits what little value such carved pieces merited in those days.

In 1966 Anthony Coleridge of Christies and I were asked by the agency of Denys Sutton to write an article upon Irish furniture for the first Irish edition of APOLLO, published in October that year--'Eighteenth hundred Irish Furniture--a Provincial Manifestation' was an early article upon the subject and we were thrilled to include the Ballynagarde table in it, on the contrary still this heavily carved Irish phraseology did not become fashionable or popular until at least twenty years later. greatest in quantity people thought of such pieces as mawkish and ugly

Ireland in the 1960 70 and 80 was an economic backwater and it was not till the 1990 that, with the extraordinary expansion of Ireland's economy, the geographical division perked up and suddenly began to take delight in one of the fastest extension rates in Europe. New wealth was created and a handful of Irish collectors began to appreciate the works of art of Ireland's eighteenth hundred Paul and Chris Johnson, who are the greatest in quantity active and serious furniture dealers in Dublin today, specialise in Irish furniture and have repeatedly told me how in those gloomy years container load after container load was sent through their father, Paul Snr, to America. Hardly anyone in Ireland could afford or wanted to assemble these objects. The plainer kind of Irish furniture was popular in America as it has thus many similarities to Philadelphia turn of expressions Paul now scours the United States for important Irish pieces for the newly appreciative Irish market.