Island bookcase (étagère) of mahogany, the two shelves supported on paired pilasters at each corner, with gilt-bronze capitals; the slab covering the bookcase is of grey granite.

Island dwarf bookcase with handles, the top with a grey granite slab, mounted with gilt bronze, supported by eight Corintian corner pilasters, the capitals with gilt-bronze mounts; two shelves and plinth platform.

The bookcase stands on a shallow plinth, raised on 4 brass castors. The corner posts are veneered in mahogany as plain pilasters, each side showing two flanking the bookshelves, the base with plain brass mounts, the capitals with cast brass capitals with a putto emerging from acanthus between scrolls. Above, the top is plainly veneered on the sides, with brass handles of swags of roses on the short sides. All the corners of the piece are squared. On the top surface a framing mount cast with water leaf surrounds a slab of grey porphyry marble, cut with square edges. There are three shelves which run right through the bookcase, veneered in mahogany, the edges set with a narrow 'balustrade', behind which the books (duodecimo) must locate. In the centre each shelf shows a hollow rectangle of similar raised fillet, to prevent the books being pushed in too far. On each long side, at each end of each shelf are two dummy books (with uniform bindings, but untitled) set against blocks of poplar, to fill the corners of the shelves. The frame mount is fixed with four screws through the corner tangs, each tang showing a vacant hole further out, on the inner edge of the frame itself, where the porphyry slab itself sits, held above the level of the carcase. The top of the carcase is keyed for glue. The underside of the slab is unevenly cut and is not polished. The carcase is of oak and poplar.

The Bettine, Lady Abingdon Collection. The Bequest of Mrs T. R. P. Hole

Part of a large group of pieces of French furniture, ceramics, metalwork, books and other decorative arts, from the late Empire period and earlier, acquired in Paris by Sir Charles Stuart (from 1828 1st Lord Stuart de Rothesay) (1779-1845).The Empire furnishings were probably purchased during his first period as ambassador to Paris (1815-1824), the earlier furnishings during his second embassy (1828-1830). The Empire furnishings may have been intended for 4 Carlton House Terrace which he acquired in the late 1820s and moved into in 1834. Older pieces were probably purchased for his country house, Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire (now Dorset), which was re-modelled and enlarged in the most ambitious Gothic style from 1830-1834, with some work continuing throughout the 1830s. In 1841 the Carlton Terrace House was let. The family moved their London residence to Whitehall Yard. It was possibly in 1841 (or 1845, the date of Lord Stuart de Rothesay's death) that the Empire furnishings were moved to Highcliffe.
Lord Stuart de Rothesay's collections were inherited in 1845 by his wife Elisabeth, Lady Stuart de Rothesay (née Yorke). After her death, Highcliffe House and its contents passed to his second daughter, Louisa, Lady Waterford (1818-1891) who maintained Highcliffe. She left the house and its collections to her distant cousin, Major-General Edward Stuart Wortley (1857-1934). When his younger daughter Elizabeth ('Bettine') married Montagu Bertie, 8th Earl of Abingdon in 1928, he bought the castle and its contents from his father-in-law. The Abingdons sold Highcliffe and most of its contents in 1949 but retained a number of pieces, including all those which later formed the Hole Bequest to the V&A. After her husband's death in 1963, Lady Abingdon lived much of the time with her close friends, Mr and Mrs Tahu Hole, to whom she bequeathed all her personal possessions on her death in 1978. Tahu Hole died in 1985 and a year later his widow Joyce approached the Museum and offered the collection as a bequest. She died in December 1986 and, in accordance with her will, the Museum chose those items that it wished to add to its collections. Other items from the collection were sold to benefit the Museum and the proceeds added to the funds bequeathed.

Both bookcases are shown in the Country Life photographs of the Library at Highcliffe, flanking the chimneypiece in 1942. They did not figure in the 1949 sale.

Historical significance: This form of small open bookcase seems to have been Jean-Georges Hornig's speciality, the only type of furniture recorded as being made by him. A similar one, unmarked, was sold by Christie's London, 29 March 1979, lot 72. This bookcase and its pair (W.22b-1987) are the earliest of this form known. They must date before 1816 because of the inventory label of that year.

The form of these low bookcases seems to derive from the cabinets in boulle marquetry made from 1770-95 by Etienne Levasseur (1721-98). On the bookcases similar corner pilasters are retained, here flanking books rather than the drawers or doors of the Levasseur pieces.

This island bookcase (or étagère) is a companion piece to Museum no. W.22B-1987. Jean-Georges Hornig, the Parisian cabinetmaker, made both pieces about 1810-1815. This form of small open bookcase was an innovation in the early 1800s and may have been Hornig's speciality. The only known pieces that he marked are bookcases of this form.

This object is on loan to Sewerby Hall.

A label records that this bookcase belonged in 1816 to Sir Charles Stuart, later Lord Stuart de Rothesay (1779-1845). At the time he was British ambassador in Paris.

W.22A/1, 2-1987