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A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 1
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 2
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 3
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 4
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 5
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 6
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 7
A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style with later contents and internal decorations (2) image 8
Lot 29TP

A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style
with later contents and internal decorations

Important Design
27 November 2019, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £16,312.50 inc. premium

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A late 18th century English painted pine baby house in the Palladian style

with later contents and internal decorations
the double bayed house with drab painted faux dressed ashlar stonework, the arched panelled door set within a triangular pedimented moulded doorcase below a glazed arched window and flanked to either side by two pairs of glazed Venetian windows, the sides with similar trompe l'oeil painted Venetian windows, the flat roof with balustrade gallery and twin rear chimneys, the triple hinged front opening to four rooms, hall with staircase and first floor landing, each room later charmingly furnished and decorated and with working lights, together with a later cream painted pine stand, probably late 19th century, the frieze fitted with a single central drawer above a concave undertier on plain rectangular legs, the house: 93cm high, 106cm wide, 50cm deep, the stand: 108cm wide, 74cm high, 53.5cm deep (2)

Footnotes

Provenance
Property of a lady.

The house sold with a fragment of wallpaper and a border taken from one of the rooms prior redecoration.
The term 'baby,' in baby house is coined from the old English word meaning doll, but also refers to the small scale of the houses and their contents. European doll houses of the 16th and 17th century consisted of a cabinet display case with individual rooms containing detailed furnishings and accessories solely intended for adults. Fully furnished, they were worth the price of a modest full-sized house. Slightly smaller houses, such as the present lot, with more realistic exteriors appeared in Europe in the 18th century.

The current house was most likely made by an estate carpenter,
possibly imitating the owner's own house. The unusual use of a series
of Venetian windows, some glazed and some painted, is a particularly
idiosyncratic feature of the present lot. Nathaniel Lloyd's History of
the English House, Architectural Press, London (1949) includes
illustrations of a house in Trumpington Street, Cambridge, which has
two similar pairs of Venetian windows to the façade dated to circa 1750. In addition, a further illustration of a clapboard house near Rolvenden, Kent, has an almost identical pedimented door case dated to circa 1780. This possibly suggests that the carpenter who produced the house may have taken inspiration from houses of this type and could have resided in the South East of England or East Anglia.

The present lot also includes a fragment of wallpaper and a border frieze (marked in pen 'for Cornice') taken from one of the rooms, prior to re-decoration, together with a further fragment of a printed coat of arms also found in the house which includes in the design a game cock crest and the motto 'Sola Nobilitas Virtus' which may or may not be the arms of the original owners family.

Additional information

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