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

Apollo, Sept, 2005 by Desmond FitzGerald

One has to be to a certain extent the prisoner of one's own environment. Being brought up at the toy-fort-like Glin Castle on the River Shannon in south-west Ireland, I greatly appreciated its delicate Adamesque interiors but even then at an early age realised that it had very 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 succeeded 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 set of twelve Regency hall chairs painted with the family crests, 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 legs clearly made from solid pieces of mahogany showing no hint of a curve. The tops of the legs are headed by 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 ledge at the back of the table. The only likely explanation is that, as the ledge's angle makes it impossible to set anything down on it, it was made in this way to protect the portrait behind it from candle flames. The portrait is of John FitzGerald, 19th Knight of Glin, being brought a challenge to a duel and dates from about 1735.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

I have over the years, when finances were possible, refurnished Glin with Irish pieces and Irish paintings. I was lucky to have been able to prowl around the London antique shops after I took up a curatorship at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1965. Delves Molesworth was my first boss there in the Furniture and Woodwork Department and after him I worked under the stimulating leadership of Peter Thornton. It was possible to find Irish things in London cheaply then, as few knew anything about Irish furniture, and Irish collectors concentrated on silver and glass.

Returning to our sideboard: in the past year or so, a much larger and even more bizarre example (Fig. 4) was privately sold for a six-figure sum. It came from Ballynagarde, in east Limerick, not far away from Glin, and was made for Edward Croker, one of the members of the notorious Limerick Hellfire Club. He is portrayed in a conversation piece of c. 1735-40 by James Worsdale, now in the National Gallery of Ireland. This portrait is very important as it shows some of the mahogany Irish furniture of the period and includes a hunt table, splat-backed chairs, and a wine cistern carved with masks. At the centre of the front of Croker's enormous sideboard is a carved vase full of flowers flanked by great seaweedy festoons of fruit, flowers and foliage. Tiny lion masks peep out below shells and the heads on the legs look like Green Men tied on by rope. This rope feature and the lion paw feet, legs, and exaggerated acanthus leaves are very similar to the one at Glin. I believe that they are both products of a workshop in Limerick or Cork.

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

Desmond Guinness tells 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 over his business in about 1966. Desmond could not see the table properly as a row of bidders were sitting on it. It was knocked down to him for 3 [pounds sterling] 10 shillings and Desmond thought he was buying a kitchen table, which he and his late wife, Mariga, needed. Imagine their surprise when the table turned out to be what it was. The price graphically shows what little value such carved pieces merited in those days.

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

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