The fashionable London cabinet maker William Hallett senior (1707-1781) produced furniture from the 1730s until the 1750s, when his son William Junior (c.1730-1767), took over the management of the firm. William Senior continued his involvement in the furniture trade by acting as a ''sleeping partner' in the cabinet making firm of Vile and Cobb. William Vile had been his journeyman, and co-founded the highly fashionable firm of Vile and Cobb. John Bowes' grandmother, Lady Eleanor Bowes, bough pieces form Hallett in the early 18th century. Although living at a distance from the Capital, this indicates that a woman of taste and means was aware of, and purchased from, the leading cabinet makers of the time. Her account books for Gibside, one of the Bowes' family residences in County Durham, reveal that she bought a 'good mahog. Couch' from Hallett for ?12 17s. In 1745 she 'Paid Hallett ye Cabinet-maker his bill in full', at a cost of ?89 13s 6d. The bookcase displays various items similar to those an 18th century young man would have acquired on his Grand Tour of Europe.
Purchased with the assistance of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the National Art Collections Fund and the Friends of the Bowes Museum.
Size: Height: 268 cm; Width: 222 cm; Depth: 78 cm.