Signed and dated
- 1673
Main Year - 1670s
Other Years
Notes
Edward Pearce's role in the design of Lord Craven's house at Hamstead (or Hampstead) Marshall in Berkshire is known from a drawing in the Bodleian Library for a gate pier at the house inscribed 'E. Peirce Fct' (MS. Gough Drawings a.2, f. 36); see Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 2008, p. 792. Work on the interiors at Hamstead Marshall was in hand in 1664, and work on the house and grounds continued through the 1670s and 1680s. The gate piers were designed by 1675, for there is a sheet of four sketches for gate piers inscribed on the verso by Pearce 'Peeres for Gates / 1675 (Sotheby's, London, 'The Talman Album', 27 April 1989, no. 2); and, in the R.C.H.M.E. collection, a photograph of a drawing on unknown whereabouts, apparently in Pearce's hand, for a large gate pier, about 5 feet wide, inscribed 'The piers before the Portico at Hampsted Marshal / 1673' (copy at Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art). The gate piers in these drawings are all 4 to 5 feet wide, with a central projecting pier, and a crowning vase. One of the examples on the sheet of sketches sold at Sotheby's in 1989 has a niche in the central pier, as in this design.
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