William Beckford (1760-1844) was one of the most remarkable men of his time and was dubbed 'England's wealthiest son' by Byron. Mozart taught him piano and by the age of twenty-one he had written the groundbreaking romance Vathek. After a homosexual scandal, he was ostracised by society.
Beckford was an exceptional amateur architect and designer. Lansdown Tower, built on a strip of land leading up to his house in Bath, was his last architectural scheme and his inventive ideas were the driving force in the design of both the interior and exterior. He rode there each day to read, write, reflect in solitude and admire his art collection. The Tower contained a series of small rooms on two floors, each displaying works of art. The Scarlet Drawing Room, for which the four coffers were designed, was the most important interior of the ground floor. Its rich, glowing decoration epitomised Beckford's intention to create in the Tower a final, perfect version of the collector's sanctuary that he had been seeking to create around him throughout his life.
The Minister's ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decision be deferred.
The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made at the following agreed fair market price:
An oak coffer, believed to be designed by William Beckford and H. E. Goodridge, deferred at the recommended price of £145,000 (exclusive of VAT), until after 19 January 2005 with the possibility of an extension until after 19 March 2005 if there is a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase.
Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the coffer should contact the owner's agent through:
The Secretary
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London SW1Y 5DH
NOTES TO EDITORS
1.Pictures of these items can be downloaded free of charge from our site on PA Picselect. Please go to the DCMS folder situated within the Arts section of Picselect either at
http://www.papicselect.com/ or through the PA bulletin board.
2. William Beckford (1760-1844) was one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was the only son of a fabulously rich sugar planter and William Pitt was his godfather. Sir William Chambers and Alexander Cozens were his tutors in architecture and in painting. After a homosexual scandal he was ostracised by society and lived in splendid seclusion –'une faste solitaire', as described by the French poet Mallarmé- on the continent and in a series of houses in Britain. He refurbished his father's Palladian mansion, Fonthill Splendens, which he subsequently demolished to build the mock-Gothic Fonthill Abbey, where he lived from 1807 to 1822. With a spire 300 feet high, the Abbey is recognised as having been the most impressive Gothic Revival house ever built in this country.
3. In 1822 debts forced the sale of the Abbey, where the tower collapsed in 1825, and Beckford's move to Bath, where he lived at No. 20 Lansdown Crescent. He bought a strip of land leading up the hill beside the house, which he transformed into a garden known as Beckford's Ride. This was slightly less than a mile in length. At its end he built the Tower. From its belvedere, 154 feet high, it is possible to see 30 miles. Beckford called it 'The finest prospect in Europe'.
4.The coffer may be deemed austere in comparison with many of the luxuriously decorated pieces collected or commissioned by William Beckford. However, its design is arrestingly architectonic and its exploitation of contrasting varieties of oak for decorative effect is extremely sophisticated, reflecting the enthusiasm for the use of native timbers that was at its height in the first third of the nineteenth century. The design of all the interiors and the furnishings at Lansdown Tower was a project of Beckford's old age, but one that proved the culmination of his creative genius. H.E. Goodridge (1797-1864) was the architect for the Tower and the designer of many of its furnishings, but it must certainly have been Beckford himself who provided the inspiration for these reliquary-like coffers.
5. The coffer, which no longer has its stand, is outstandingly fine and strong in its design. In the design of the coffers, Beckford brought together a number of ideas that appealed to his romantic sensibilities. The type of coffer on stand echoes the so-called marriage coffers of late 17th century France and Italy and the tradition of evidently luxurious protection for precious objects that produced the Sèvres-mounted jewel cabinets made by Martin Carlin in the late eighteenth century. The form of these coffer-cabinets is robustly architectural in a quite revolutionary manner. The form of the domed top suggest that the observer is looking at the outer surface of a barrel-vaulted space, much like that designed for the Book-Room at Lansdown Tower by Goodridge in 1828.
6. The coffer illustrates how the choice of contrasting veneers, used with turned and carved details (partly gilded), evoked some of the richness and variety of the marble used in Renaissance interiors. In the Scarlet Room, as in other interiors in the Lansdown Tower, Beckford used marbles for the window-sills as well as the chimney-piece, and carefully placed a table with a top of Egyptian porphyry before the window. His very deliberate selection of woods for the coffers can be seen as one element in his building up of an interior of almost ecclesiastical richness.
7. Beckford's interest in a lively, ginger palette for woods, as well as in ebonised pieces, was first evident in the furnishings of the Edward III Gallery at Fonthill Abbey. Dark, heavily-varnished antiquarian pieces held no interest for him. Even the furniture he commissioned to support and show some of his historical treasures, such as the Borghese table now at Charlecote Park in Warwickshire and the 'Holbein' cabinet now in the V&A, indicate the perfection of form and finish he consistently demanded in such objects.
