Footnotes

• Provenance:
  Sheffield Park, East Sussex
  Private Collection, West of England
  Phillips London, 12 October 1999, lot 17
  
  Sheffield Park was the home of Anglo-Irish politician and theorist John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield (d.1821) where James Wyatt worked extensively in the late 1770s. The design of the celebrated Sheffield Park dining chairs have been attributed to Wyatt and Gillows (sold Christie's, London, 11 November 1999, lot 50). The Sheffield family had emigrated to Ireland during the reign of Charles II and acquired a substantial fortune. Sheffield was still heavily involved in Irish politics but his third marriage to the daughter of Lord North bought him to the forefront of British politics in the early 1800s.
  
  The grotesque mask was among recurrent devices used in Ireland and following a long tradition with stone carved examples found from the Celtic period onwards. An Irish side table with a 'goblin' mask of circa 1740 is illustrated in A.Coleridge and F.Fitzgerald's article for Apollo October 1966, Eighteenth Century Irish Furniture, A Provincial Manifestation, fig.23.