That the essentially conservative nature of the Irish collector is nothing new can be demonstrated by the career of James Hicks. The most proficient and admired of this country's cabinetmakers in the 20th century, Hicks enjoyed as much popularity during his life as he has posthumously.
Pieces from his workshop come up regularly at auction and they always secure excellent prices, as buyers are confident of every item's quality and durability. Hicks's furniture, in addition to its impeccable craftmanship, is invariably graceful and easy to place in any home. However, while his high standards are consistent, so too is Hicks's want of imagination and the essentially anachronistic character of his designs. When he first started his own business in 1894, the Celtic Revival movement was at its height, yet Hicks showed no interest in producing items with a distinctively "Irish" appearance. By the time he died in 1936, the modernist movement had permeated Ireland but evidence of this is non-existent in his work. Instead, Hicks was content to design and manufacture what might be called pastiche 18th-century English furniture.
Except on a handful of pieces, he did not employ Irish motifs such as the lion's claw foot or central mask on tables which had been so popular during the early and mid18th century. Hicks's preference was for designs from a slightly later period, when neoclassicism had come into favour; Adam, Sheraton and Chippendale were his three muses.
A specific influence has been traced to the late 18th-century cabinet-maker William Moore, who moved to Dublin in 1782 after training in London with the firm of Ince and Mayhew. The son of a chair-maker, James Hicks was born in Dublin and after serving an apprenticeship in London he returned to open premises in his native city on Lower Pembroke Street in 1894. His success appears to have been rapid; in 1903, Princess Victoria, daughter of Edward VII, bought a number of his pieces - the king himself is also supposed to have purchased a set of chairs - and two years later the newly-married Crown Princess of Sweden ordered Hicks's furniture for her palace in Stockholm. In 1928, Hicks was commissioned to furnish the Dail and Seanad in Leinster House and he refurnished Cabinteely House after 1933 for Joe McGrath.
In The Arts & Crafts Movements in Dublin and London, 1885-1925, published last year, Nicola Gordon Bowe quotes Daisy, Lady Fingall as recalling that in 1904 Hugh Lane arranged for Hicks to make shelving and bookcases for her home, Killeen Castle. "His own high standard of art", she remembered, would not allow him to produce anything unworthy of "the great tradition of cabinetmaking from which he was descended".
In her memoirs, Lady Fingall also referred to Hicks possessing "an untidy workshop in Pembroke Street, where many great people visited him". His firm employed some 24 cabinet-makers and artisans, supervised by Hicks, who seems to have been particularly preoccupied with high standards.
According to Desmond Fitzgerald, the Knight of Glin, Hicks's marquetry was done to his designs by Harry Sherrard of Liffey Street, while carving was usually left to James Levins Snr and Jr; they would have been responsible for the rococo-style mirrors produced by Hicks and for the friezes featured on certain table fronts.
Hicks's nephew, Harry, was another member of staff, who worked on Titania's Palace, the dolls' house designed by Sir Neville Wilkinson, the framework of which was built of mahogany in eight sections in the Pembroke Street workshop. Mahogany was the most common material used, but his work also features a variety of imported woods such as satinwood, tulipwood and rosewood. Furniture by Hicks regularly won awards when exhibited at fairs, including the Gold Trophy at the 1928 Aonach.
Although he found time to teach at craft schools in Dublin, Hicks, who died in 1936, seems to have had few successors and certainly none of his calibre. He was, in effect, this country's last master cabinet-maker of the old school. His want of innovation, occasionally the subject of critical comments during Hicks's lifetime, never deterred admiration either then or since. A year ago, the James Adam salesroom auctioned a collection of Hicks's furniture, every lot of which greatly exceeded its presale estimate. A George III-style mahogany serpentine front display cabinet, for example, was expected to make £5,000-£7,000 but eventually went for £19,000. Similarly, a Georgian-style mahogany extending dining table (estimate £2,000-£3,000) fetched £23,000 and a George III-style carved and giltwood pier mirror (estimate, £6,000-£8,000) was bought for £17,000. It therefore seems certain that Hicks's furniture will continue to command both admiration and good prices.
