The 5th Earl of Carlisle, responsible for much of Castle Howard’s interior decoration during the late 18th Century, loved the work of renowned Georgian cabinet maker John Linnell, with lots of Linnell’s furniture still in our collection today. This blog is a deep dive into the Castle Howard Bedroom Suite, created by Linnell, from materials, to history, to style.
The Castle Howard Bedroom suite has a rich and fascinating past which has been brought to life by some historical detective work and research in the Castle Howard archives. A project to restore Linnell’s four poster bed uncovered an interesting story of a piece that has evolved to suit changing times, fashions, and owners.
Made between 1777 and 1789, the full bedroom suite includes window pelmets, chairs, bedside commodes. The centrepiece is of course the enormous four-poster bed, with a parcel gilt two-tier canopy carved with leaf and honeysuckle motifs. The under-canopy is painted with wreaths and a central fan medallion, the posts are painted with entwined ivy, and the base is painted with a decorative design known as paterae. The ivy motif can be seen on the rest of the bedroom suite too, which connects the pieces together.
Over the years, the Castle Howard Bedroom and it’s furniture has been through a number of changes:
Originally built during the West Wing’s construction in the 1750s, the room was not in regular use until the end of the 18th century.
It became the 6th Earl of Carlisle’s bedroom in the 1830s, when it was redecorated with chintz curtains and a Brussels carpet.
By the end of the 19th century, four tapestries with scenes by French artist Jean Antoine Watteau replaced paintings by Canaletto that had previously hung in the room.
In 1992–1993 the room was rewired, fitted with a new wood floor, and fully repainted.
In 1993 the Linnell bedroom suite was restored by Patrick Dingwall of Bedale. He discovered exciting clues suggesting that these pieces of furniture had undergone some interesting changes:
A late 19th century label from a local craftsman, Martin Dodsworth of Malton, was discovered on the canopy revealing the bed was previously much taller. Dodsworth had lowered the height by roughly three or four feet.
The original structure curved upwards in a dome-like shape, but the concave sections were cut through by Dodsworth and the upper section removed; a square, tiered dome was put on and a basket fitted to the top. Dingwall suggests that this shows that the bed originally stood in a chamber with a higher ceiling, and that Dodsworth was commissioned to lower the height of the bed because of its movement to a room with a lower ceiling.
The original location is likely to have been the Green Silk Bedchamber in the High South, where very high ceilings would have accommodated a very tall bed.
Well, the special thing about this suite is that it was, there are remarkably few bedroom suites of this stature in the country. State, I suppose you would call it, sort of state bedrooms of this type where you have a commission of this kind were rare, even in Chippendale’s day. So, it’s surprisingly extensive, and also the fact that it’s all together and hasn’t been broken up. I mean you find frequently throughout the ages that, you know, one descendant decides that they want to have dining chairs and they think, oh well, you can have all those dining chairs that are in the Linnell bedroom, why not take those, because they would serve just as well. But the wonderful thing is that in this case it’s still all here to be seen.
Images by Emily Main, July 2022, model processed by Talia Perry.
The Castle Howard Bedroom Suite was made of fustic, which is often mistaken for satinwood, an exotic species of wood popular for its rippling mottled grain. Although the furniture has the same vibrance and warmth of satinwood, restorer Simon Banks realised the wood was fustic – an altogether different species.
How did fustic make its way to Castle Howard?
Fustic wood has another use as a dye, and as early as the 1600s was being extracted from the British West Indies for this purpose. It’s possible that craftsmen in the wood trades first encountered fustic as a wood stain, as it could be mixed with madder (a plant in the coffee family) to imitate light, young mahogany.
Fustic was primarily harvested in Jamaica and Tobago during the 18th century. Similar to sugar, fustic was implicated alongside other exports in the transatlantic slave trade.
Fustic was imported by the ton, sometimes chipped or in casks of “fustick dust” readied for the dying process.
As furniture makers began to experiment with fustic, larger pieces of the material were imported alongside processed fragments. While not inexpensive, it was significantly less costly than mahogany: high-quality fustic from Tobago cost half the price of low-end Hondurian mahogany, at 4 pence per board foot versus 8 pence per board foot.
To put those prices in perspective, London carpenters and joiners made an average of 13 pence per day in the late 18th century, roughly equivalent to the cost of a single board foot of the highest quality Jamaican mahogany. Upholsterers at Linnell’s firm had a slightly more generous rate at £0.20 per day
To put those prices in perspective, London carpenters and joiners made an average of 13 pence per day in the late 18th century, roughly equivalent to the cost of a single board foot of the highest quality Jamaican mahogany. Upholsterers at Linnell’s firm had a slightly more generous rate at £0.20 per day.
Photos by Emily Main, July 2022; model processed by author using Agisoft Metashape.
It might have been the cheaper price, or it might not. Other pieces by Linnell in the collection are grand and expensive, including a pembroke table made from mahogany with elements in ebony, and a serpentine kneehole desk veneered in satinwood with decoration integrating yew and mahogany.
Therefore, the wood was possibly chosen for how it looked.
While colour may have been the catalyst for fustic’s introduction to a new type of market, colour was also the reason it fell out of favour. As designer Thomas Sheraton explained in 1803, fustic “was found to turn by the air and heat of the sun to a dead brownish hue, [and] it was laid aside as unfit for such purposes.”
Today, the canary yellow ground of the Linnell bedroom suite has indeed mellowed to a deep honey brown, and when components protected from UV light are uncovered the wood remains brighter, though not quite at its original sunny shade.
Despite Sherton’s criticism of the aged colour, the fustic wood comes alive in this bedroom suite, welcoming visitors with a gentle embrace, accented with a delicate green and glittering gold.
The Castle Howard Bedroom four-poster bed, made by John Linnell for the 5th Earl of Carlisle between 1777 and 1789, is the room’s main focus, and its own room within a room! With multiple layers and tiers of ornament, the bed is, as restoration expert Patrick Dingwall says, “all about grand decoration.”
Linnell’s design incorporated a few different styles with an impressive effect – right at the forefront of fashion in the mid-18th century.
A four-poster bed like this is typically positioned with its head against a wall with foot and sides open, featuring four vertical posts which support a tester. The bedstead is the structural framework, typically made from wood, while curtains are fixed from above at each corner for warmth and privacy.
The carved and painted bedstead gave plenty of opportunity for ornamentation and flourishes.
The images show several beds designed by Linnell, only some of which were ever made. There is clear overlap between the Castle Howard bed and Linnell’s earlier designs, but it also includes some unique elements.
We can see: a pagoda base, interlaced chains of leaves, Cavetto cornicing, painted ivy spirals, a medallion in the under canopy, and parcel gilt anthemion antefixae.
All of these elements together combine with beautiful and dramatic effect.
As the bed was shuffled from one room to another in the house, its form needed to be modified, and with it, the decoration. Patrick Dingwall explains these alterations, made c. 1870 by Dodsworth of Malton, including some of the elements we mentioned earlier like changing the height of the bed.
About the authors and their work
This blog is the result of a collaborative digital research project coordinated by the Furniture History Society and British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO) with the Castle Howard Curatorial team, and undertaken by Masters students Emily Main (University of Leeds, UK) and Talia Perry (Bard Graduate Center, New York, USA).
Further Reading
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