We are apt to think of the early Quakers as folk of simple taste. What we may have missed is that the wealthier ones possessed a taste for beauty and style.

This piece of exquisite furniture (pictured), an eighteenth century mahogany bookcase, was made by the renowned cabinetmakers Gillows of Lancaster for the widow of Thomas Hutton Rawlinson. He was a Quaker ironmaster who made his money (£49,000 by all accounts) from trading in the West Indies. The mahogany could have been imported by the family firm.

Eye is no expert on historical artefacts but we are told the bookcase is a fine example of carving, marquetry and tracery work. The president of the Furniture History Society says that the Rawlinson bookcase shines 'even in comparison with a piece which would, until its emergence, have been regarded as the summit of Gillows production at this period'.

Now the bookcase is back where it belongs, in Lancaster. It has been purchased for £260,000 by the Lancashire County Council Museums service after a campaign to save it for the nation. Mary Hutton Rawlinson had taken delivery of it in July 1772 at a cost of £21.

When the London antique dealer Apter-Fredericks first acquired the bookcase it had descended through the Gurneys. Obviously, it has stayed within the wider Quaker family.

Labels: gillows, ironmaster, lancaster, marquetry, rawlinson