A Monumental Irish Library In The George IV Style

A spectacular mahogany and mahogany veneer bookcase, of architectonic form; opening with twelve glazed doors at the top and twelve carved solid doors. Slightly recessed upper section opening with twelve glazed doors and lower section opening with twelve solid doors decorated with wide channels. Projecting side bays decorated with pilasters with capitals. Triangular pediment decorated with a coat of arms. Irish, mid 19th century. The bookcase is signed in pencil 'Jacob Graham, Maker, 1849' on the underside of the lower right-hand section. A 'Jacob Graham and Son' is recorded as working in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary in the 1820s in Pigott's Commercial Directory, 1824. The bookcase is designed in the Grecian manner with its temple pediment crowned by a stepped plinth bearing a shield for a bust, echoed by the projecting side cabinets surmounted by a plinth. The library evokes lyric poetry with pilasters surmounted by beaded paterae of Venus accompanied by palms of Apollo on the paired composite pilasters of the armoire. Its chest of drawers doors are carved with sturdy reed gadroons in the manner of Elizabethan trompe-l'oeil books folded in linen. The library's robust architecture reflects the Regency fashion promoted by Rudolph Ackerman's magazine The Repository of Arts, published from 1809 to 1828, as the model for a Greek library designed according to correct principles and published in 1824 (January, III, 3, pl. 3, p. 59). The library was probably commissioned by Cornelius O' Callaghan, 1st Viscount Lismore (1775–1857), and designed for Shanbally Castle, County Tipperary, after its completion to the designs of the architect John Nash (d. 1835), Surveyor-General to the Board of Works to George, Prince Regent, later George IV. Shanbally Castle is described in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland, by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin & Nicholas K. Robinson, p. 136, as "John Nash's most important and grandest Irish castle. Built about 1806... the castle in good repair was sold in 1954 and despite press protests was demolished in 1957. Its destruction was one of Ireland's great architectural losses of the century."
The books in the pictures are not included!