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A SET OF EIGHT MAHOGANY AND BRASS-INLAID DINING CHAIRS, IN REGENCY STYLE, LATE 20th CENTURY, includi

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA
A SET OF EIGHT MAHOGANY AND BRASS-INLAID DINING CHAIRS, IN REGENCY STYLE, LATE 20th CENTURY, includi
A SET OF EIGHT MAHOGANY AND BRASS-INLAID DINING CHAIRS, IN REGENCY STYLE, LATE 20th CENTURY, including two open armchairs with drop-in seats, the splats inlaid with foliate arabesques. (8)
e600/900

The Roe Deer at Lissadell
"The roe deer were introduced into Co. Sligo Ireland by Sir Henry Gore-Booth, Bt., early in the 1870s, fawns having been caught by muzzled retrievers at Dupplin Castle (Perthshire) and sent over in the charge of a keeper..." so wrote (John) Kenneth Foster, a family friend whose younger brother (Charles Percival Foster) married Mabel Gore-Booth, Sir Henry's youngest daughter, in 1898. Roe deer are not an indigenous species and the interest of the Lissadell specimens lies both in the fact that they are the only roe deer to have been introduced to Ireland, but also in view of their great size. "Six or seven years after their introduction, Sir Henry realised that they were going to carry grand heads, being much heavier and longer... than Scotch roe deer. Two does with minute horns (lot 63) have been shot, one of them showing a good many points lying flat on the head."
Thomas Kilgallon, the Lissadell butler, is the other contemporary source of information about the roe deer. He records "The first five died; the second five, one lived; the third five, all lived... They were nice to look at ...they grew to be much larger in body and the size of their antlers than those in Scotland owing to much richer feeding ground."
The first animal was not shot until 1878 (lot 62). An inscription is engraved on the brass plate on the back of the mount ("shot at
Lissadell, 1878 Primus in Hibernia"). Lot 67 is perhaps the most remarkable specimen. The mount bears the inscription
"celebrated Lissadell Royal (twelve points) found dead by me in Church Hill plantation, killed fighting" HW Gore-Booth. Other fine specimens include lots 68 (nine points) and 69 (eight points) and the three loose antlers (lot 63), of which two may have been a pair. CK Whitehead, the author of Deer and their management in the deer parks of Great Britain and Ireland (1950, Country Life), described the Lissadell Royal (in an article in Country Life dated 9 May 1957) as "without doubt the most remarkable head ever secured in the British Isles".
After Sir Henry's death in 1900, Sir Josslyn appears to have followed a policy of eradication in view of the damage being inflicted by the roe deer on the forestry. Thus came to an end an unusual and successful experiment.
References: Millais, JG: British deer and their horns (Sotheran, London, 1897)
Whitehead, G Kenneth: Record British roe heads (Country Life, May 9, 1957)
Fairley, James and others:The roe deer of Lissadell (Deer, vol. 12. no. 4 July 2002)
Barclay, EN: The Introduction and Extermination of roe deer in Ireland (Natural History Magazine 3, 1932)