Italian cabinets and tables decorated with inlaid semi-precious stones known as ‘pietre dure’ were a ‘must-have’ for English milords returning from their Grand Tours. The finest example is perhaps the Sixtus V cabinet at Stourhead, in Wiltshire, which has just been written up in a thorough, scholarly way by Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd, two eminent furniture and architectural historians.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £40 Tel: 08430 600033. James Yorke is the author of Lancaster House: London’s Greatest Town House.
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