An important and impressive James I/Charles I carved oak overmantel, probably Newcastle, circa 1625


Topped by a moulded cornice and a frieze centred by a carved meandering vine, the two outer reserves with masks between fruits, all spaced by applied winged masks, the central lower section with the Royal Arms of England as used 1603 - 1649, with foliate mantling and Garter motto, flanked on the left hand by a panel carved with Orpheus, charming the beasts with his music, the panel on the right hand with Arion playing his lyre, and surrounded by sea creatures and waves, spaced by figures emblematic of the Four Continents, and titled AFRICA, ASIA, EUROPA and AMERICA, 371.5cm wide x 18cm deep x 123cm high, (146in wide x 7in deep x 48in high)
|Provenance:Hunwick Hall, County DurhamYorke familyIllustrated:Anthony Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (1997), p. 188, pl. 309.Hunwick Hall was owned by the Hutton family until 1637, when it was sold to William Kennett (1594-1663) a member of a prominent recusant family. Anthony Wells-Cole (ibid., pp. 187-9) notes that the print source for the depictions of Orpheus and Arion was The Elements, designed and engraved in Cologne and dated 1602. The figures allegorical of the Four Continents were adapted from Galle's Prosopographia.