THE CUSWORTH HALL FIRE SCREEN, The screen: English, circa 1765
The needlework: English, circa 1765
Width: 43 in; 109.5 cm
Further images
A George III mahogany fire screen with Soho needlework attributed to Wright & Elwick. The reverse side pain fabric and braid have been changed at some stage.
The firm of Wright & Elwick had premises in both London and Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, from which they supplied furniture, needlework and tapestries. A trade card with the reverse side used as an invoice and dated 1758, preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, states that Richard Wright had been director of ‘The Greatest Tapestry Manufactory in England for Upwards of Twenty Years’.
Payments to Wright & Elwick totalling £131 6s between 1762 and 1771 are recorded in ledgers preserved at the Leeds Archive Service, West Yorkshire. It is likely that the screen was supplied during that period.
The screen remained with the family at Cusworth Hall, South Yorkshire, until the furnishings were sold in 1952. It has survived in remarkable untouched condition and retains the original needlework panel.
Provenance
John Battie, Cusworth Hall, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England;
By descent at Cusworth Hall until 1952;
Walter Waddingham Ltd., Harrogate, England;
John Martin Beazor, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, 1962;
Simon Redburn Antiques, London, England;
Hotspur Ltd., London, England;
The Hon. David McAlpine, London, England.
Exhibitions
CINOA International Art Treasures Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1962, lent by John Martin Beazor.
The Golden Age of English Furniture Upholstery 1660-1840, Temple Newsam, Leeds, 1973.
Literature
Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert, The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840, 1986, pp. 1006-7.
Illustrated:
CINOA ‘International Art Treasures Exhibition’, exhibition catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1962, no. 250, pl. 156.
Karin M. Walton, The Golden Age of English Furniture Upholstery 1660-1840, Leeds 1973, fig. 20.
Anthony Coleridge, The Cusworth Suite, 2008, p. 35, fig. 17.
Ronald Phillips, Fine Antique English Furniture, London 2019, pp. 222/223.
