At the dispersal auction sale of the Core One dealer collective held at Christie's South Kensington on Tuesday, a garden bench designed by Thomas Jeckyll (1827 - 1881) and made by Barnard Bishop & Barnard of Norwich. A central panel in this particular bench was cast with J LONG WHITE HILL CATERHAM 1883 and the bench end was also cast with Barnard Bishop and Barnard Norwich who, incidentally, won an award for a garden seat at London's International Horticultural Exhibition in 1866.
 
Jeckyll, whose father George was a non-conformist clerk, and his brother Henry a brassfounder in Dudley, became an architect and after 1858 moved to London where he befriended James McNeill Whistler and designed metalwork including his Aesthetic grates, for which he is best known amongst salvage dealers now. The decoration of this cast iron seat alludes to the Peacock Room designed by Jeckyll and decorated by Whistler for shiping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland at 49 Princes Gate, London - now in the Freer Gallery, Washington.
 
The ends of this bench are similar to a gilt iron chair, both designed by Jeckyll in 1878 (both apparently after he went mad and ended up incarcerated in a Norwich asylum), with a fan splat back, with each fan having an eye of a sunflower, similar to a displaying peacock. The back of the bench is very similar to the gold rendering of peacocks in Leyland's room by Whistler of a pattern of overlapping discs, and echoed in the brass fender Jeckyll designed for the room. Whistler chose peacocks to symbolise the decadence of Leyland, and the stylised feathers to resemble coins.
 
The 1865 guide to the Great Eastern Railway states that Barnard Bishop and Barnards are makers on a large scale of wrought iron park and garden chairs with metallic cane pattern seats, some with 'elastic galvanized spiral seats and backs' which have 'brought them into extensive use in public parks in London' and 'the extraordinary cheapness of these seats is astounding'.
 
The Jeckyll bench sold for a mid-estimate £5,250.