J. Simon, ‘Thomas Johnson’s “The Life of the Author”’, Furniture History Society, vol. XXXIX, 2003, pp. 1-64
T. Johnson, One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (London: 1761),pl. 42
An important pair of George III carved and gilded brackets, the foliage-carved top shelf above pierced fronding supported by pilasters and brickwork, featuring carved dogs and trees.
These wall brackets compare closely to published designs by the carver and designer Thomas Johnson, one of the most important designers and technically gifted carvers of eighteenth-century England.
They are identical in structure to the design in the top left-hand corner of Plate 42 (below) of One Hundred And Fifty New Designs published by Johnson in 1761.
In general conception, the brackets, featuring foliage, icicles, c-scrolls, trees and dogs clambering on rockwork, match Johnson’s iconic oeuvre of fanciful, daring designs, much celebrated at the time and now by connoisseurs of mid-eighteenth-century furniture.
These designs are characterised by the ‘rustic’ which Johnson combined with the French or Modern style, already blended with Chinese and Gothic motifs by Thomas Chippendale and Matthias Locke to create the English Rococo, in his Twelve Girandoles in 1755 and in his Collection of Designs in 1758.
Inspired by Francis Barlow’s illustrations of Aesop’s Fables (1687), the rustic is the explicit imitation of nature, expressed here in the carving of the trees, roots and hollow branches or twigs and the dogs clambering on the landscape.
Designs by Chippendale, Locke and Johnson were published to show their imagination and talent for combining exquisite proportion with relevant and fashionable designs. However, these designs were so complex and intricate that due to physical and technical impracticalities they were almost never executed exactly to a given pattern.
This pair of wall brackets is the extremely rare instance of the execution of a highly complex documented patterned design.